People v. Edwards

• Decision Date: 05 July 2001
• Citation: People v. Edwards, 96 N.Y.2d 445, 729 N.Y.S.2d 410, 754 N.E.2d 169 (N.Y. 2001)
• Parties: THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Appellant-Respondent, v. DANIEL EDWARDS, Respondent-Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

96 N.Y.2d 445

754 N.E.2d 169

729 N.Y.S.2d 410

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Appellant-Respondent, v. DANIEL EDWARDS, Respondent-Appellant.

Court of Appeals of the State of New York.

Argued May 2, 2001.

Decided July 5, 2001.

Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General, New York City (Robin A. Forshaw, Preeta D. Bansal, Michael S. Belohlavek and Janet Cohn of counsel), for appellant-respondent.

Joseph F. Cawley, Jr., Binghamton, and Thomas A. Saitta for respondent-appellant.

Gary Fidel, Kew Gardens, Robert M. Carney, District Attorney of Schenectady County, Schenectady, and Bruce Seeliger for New York State District Attorneys Association, amicus curiae.

Chief Judge KAYE and Judges CIPARICK, WESLEY, ROSENBLATT and GRAFFEO concur with Judge LEVINE; Judge SMITH dissents in a separate opinion.

OPINION OF THE COURT

LEVINE, J.

On May 29, 1997, defendant Daniel Edwards was indicted on one count each of murder in the first degree (see, Penal Law § 125.27 [1] [a] [vi]; [b]; L 1995, ch 1), murder in the second degree (Penal Law § 125.25 [1]), conspiracy in the second degree (Penal Law § 105.15) and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree (Penal Law § 265.03). On January 26, 1998, the prosecution filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty pursuant to CPL 250.40 (2).

In September 1998, County Court denied defendant's motions to suppress oral and written statements he had made to the police, and scheduled the trial to begin November 9, 1998. Prior to that date, the People and counsel for defendant entered into plea negotiations and ultimately agreed that defendant would be permitted to plead guilty to murder in the first degree in full satisfaction of the indictment and receive an indeterminate sentence of 25 years to life imprisonment, in exchange for defendant's cooperation in the prosecution's case against his codefendants. They further agreed that the prosecution would formally withdraw the notice of intent after defendant's allocution and offer of his guilty plea but before the court's acceptance of that plea. After a recess, during which defendant had the opportunity to confer once again with his counsel, defendant offered a plea of guilty to murder in the first degree in accordance with the terms and conditions of the plea agreement.

County Court conducted a detailed allocution regarding whether defendant offered the plea freely, voluntarily and with full awareness of the rights he was forfeiting. At the time of the plea, defendant expressly waived his right to appeal except with respect to his motion to suppress. After defendant's allocution, the People withdrew the notice of intent and County Court then accepted defendant's plea and ordered a presentence investigation and report.

On December 22, 1998, after defendant's guilty plea had been entered but before sentencing, this Court decided Matter of Hynes v Tomei (92 NY2d 613, cert denied 527 US 1015). Hynes came to this Court as a result of a CPLR article 78 petition in the nature of prohibition seeking to prevent Justice Tomei from enforcing an order declaring the plea provisions of the death penalty statute facially unconstitutional. In that case, we struck CPL 220.10 (5) (e) and CPL 220.30 (3) (b) (vii), the plea provisions, from New York's death penalty statute. Those provisions permitted a defendant—against whom a 250.40 (2) notice was pending—to enter a guilty plea to the crime of first degree murder only with consent of the People and permission of the court and only when the agreed-upon sentence was either life without parole or a term of years.

This Court excised those provisions to avoid a constitutional infirmity under United States v Jackson (390 US 570 [1968]). New York's death penalty statute, like the defect the Supreme Court specifically identified in the Federal Kidnaping Act in Jackson, created a two-tiered penalty structure that impermissibly burdened capital defendants' Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and Sixth Amendment rights to trial by jury by limiting imposition of a death sentence exclusively to defendants asserting those rights by insisting upon a jury trial (see, Matter of Hynes, supra, at 621, citing United States v Jackson, supra, at 583). In order to remedy that flaw, this Court construed the first-degree murder statute to prohibit entry of a guilty plea to murder in the first degree while a CPL 250.40 notice is pending (see, Matter of Hynes v Tomei, supra, at 629). Further, in order to prevent a "race to the courthouse" in first-degree murder cases, we held that a defendant does not have an unqualified right to plead guilty before the notice is filed and prior to the expiration of the statutory period within which the notice may be filed (see, Matter of Francois v Dolan, 95 NY2d 33, 38-39).

In February 1999, defendant moved to withdraw his guilty plea on the ground that it was invalid under Matter of Hynes v Tomei. County Court denied the motion, noting first that defendant did "not challenge his plea as involuntary or unknowing or unintelligent," and concluding that because defendant's plea was actually entered "after the notice of intent was withdrawn" or "in conjunction with the withdrawal of the notice of intent," it was valid notwithstanding Matter of Hynes v Tomei (180 Misc 2d 564, 566, 567). Thereafter, on April 28, 1999, the court sentenced defendant to 25 years to life in prison, in accordance with the terms of the negotiated plea.

On appeal to the Appellate Division, defendant argued that his plea was invalid and that his suppression motion was improperly denied. That court reversed defendant's conviction on the ground that it was error to deny defendant's motion to withdraw his plea, vacated defendant's plea and sentence and restored the parties to their pre-plea position by reinstating the notice of intent to seek the death penalty.¹ The Appellate Division determined that because the plea was entered "pursuant to statutory provisions invalidated after defendant's waiver [of his right to appeal] * * * defendant could not have knowingly and intelligently waived his right to appeal the constitutional infirmity" (274 AD2d 754, 756 [emphasis supplied]). The court further concluded that defendant's challenge fell into the category of those claims—such as an illegal sentence or an involuntary plea—that could never be waived in any event.

Turning to defendant's argument that this Court's decision in Hynes v Tomei rendered his plea invalid, the Appellate Division held that the procedure utilized by County Court in order to avoid any Jackson problem was "flawed because it overlooks the essence of the Hynes-Jackson infirmity" (id., at 757). The court reasoned that the "constitutional infirmity arises not from the entry of a guilty plea to murder in the first degree while a death notice is pending, but from the requirement placed upon a defendant to choose between pleading guilty to murder in the first degree or opting for trial while a death notice is pending" (id. [emphasis in the original]). Thus, the Appellate Division concluded that the "mere proffer of a plea bargain to murder in the first degree while a death notice is pending presents a capital defendant with the same unconstitutional choice faced by the defendants in Matter of Hynes v Tomei * * * and Matter of Relin v Connell * * * namely, `exercise Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights and risk death, or abandon those rights and avoid the possibility of death'" (id., at 757-758 [quoting Matter of Hynes v Tomei, supra, at 626]). A Judge of this Court granted both the People and defendant leave to appeal. We now reverse on the People's appeal, and dismiss defendant's appeal.²

On this appeal, the dispositive issue is whether, as a matter of Federal constitutional law, defendant's plea of guilty to first degree murder was invalid as having impermissibly burdened his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.³ The People essentially raise three points for reversal. First, they argue that invalidity under Jackson-Hynes was avoided under the sequence in which defendant's plea was offered, accepted and entered in this case. That is because immediately after defendant's allocution, but before the plea actually became effective by its acceptance by the court and its formal entry, the People had withdrawn the notice of intent to seek the death penalty. Second, the People contend that, even assuming that the mere proffer of a guilty plea while a notice of intent was still pending implicated a Jackson infirmity, it would not necessarily render defendant's plea of guilty constitutionally invalid, and the Appellate Division erred in holding otherwise. Third, the People assert that defendant's separate waiver of his right to appeal precludes appellate review of all claims except for that related to denial of his suppression motion. Because we agree that, under binding Supreme Court precedent, defendant's plea was not rendered invalid by Jackson-Hynes, we need not address whether the specific procedure employed in this case avoided any Jackson defect, nor whether defendant's waiver of his right to appeal precluded him from making his constitutional claims.

Defendant makes a two-fold counter-argument regarding the validity of his guilty plea under Jackson-Hynes. First, he contends that, because he did not—and indeed could not— predict this Court's decision in Matter of Hynes v Tomei, as a matter of law his guilty plea could not have been made knowingly and intelligently and the Appellate Division therefore correctly set it aside. Second, he argues that, as the Appellate Division held, Jackson-Hynes invalidates any procedural scheme under which a defendant is forced to choose to plead guilty to a capital offense as the only means of avoiding exposure to the death penalty. Hence, as a result, a guilty plea thus engendered cannot constitutionally be valid. United States Supreme Court precedents defeat both arguments.

As to the effect of the handing...