People v. Francis
| Citation | 2015 N.Y. Slip Op. 07679,132 A.D.3d 893,18 N.Y.S.3d 129 |
| Decision Date | 21 October 2015 |
| Docket Number | 2012-05765, Ind. No. 11-00329. |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, etc., respondent, v. Eugene FRANCIS, appellant. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court Appellate Division |
Andrew W. Sayegh, Yonkers, N.Y., for appellant.
Janet DiFiore, District Attorney, White Plains, N.Y. (Catalina Blanco Buitrago and Steven A. Bender of counsel), for respondent.
WILLIAM F. MASTRO, J.P., RUTH C. BALKIN, ROBERT J. MILLER, and COLLEEN D. DUFFY, JJ.
Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Westchester County (Neary, J.), rendered May 2, 2012, convicting him of attempted burglary in the first degree, upon his plea of guilty, and imposing sentence.
ORDERED that the judgment is affirmed.
The defendant was charged in a single indictment with multiple criminal offenses arising from two separate incidents that occurred on June 29, 2010, and July 1, 2010. He subsequently moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground, inter alia, that his statutory right to a speedy trial had been violated (see CPL 30.30 ). Following a lengthy hearing on the matter, the Supreme Court (Molea, J.), issued a decision and order dated January 9, 2012, in which it granted the defendant's motion. However, on the following day, and clearly within the time period for reargument, the court issued an amended decision and order with respect to its statutory speedy trial determination, granting the motion with respect to the first six counts of the indictment, but denying it with respect to counts seven, eight, and nine. In the amended decision and order, the court explained that, while the first six counts of the indictment pertained to the defendant's conduct on June 29, 2010, and had to be dismissed because more than six months of unexcused delay had occurred between the filing of the felony complaint regarding that conduct and the People's indication of readiness for trial, the criminal conduct underlying counts seven, eight, and nine was the subject of a second, separate felony complaint, and there was no evidence of a speedy trial violation with respect to those counts. In fact, the case file demonstrates that the People indicated their readiness for trial well within six calendar months after that second felony complaint was filed.
The prosecution of the defendant proceeded on counts seven, eight, and nine, which charged him with burglary in the first degree, robbery in the second degree, and menacing in the second degree, respectively. Thereafter, on March 6, 2012, the defendant entered a plea of guilty to the reduced charge of attempted burglary in the first degree in full satisfaction of the indictment. As a condition of the negotiated plea, the defendant conceded his status as a second violent felony offender and, on May 2, 2012, a judgment was rendered sentencing him in accordance with that status.
The defendant appeals from the judgment, contending that his plea must be vacated because the court erred in issuing the amended decision and order dated January 10, 2012, which denied his CPL 30.30 dismissal motion as to counts seven, eight, and nine, since the indictment had already been dismissed on the previous day, and the amended decision and order was “without legal basis or explanation.” We disagree.
Under the foregoing circumstances, the Supreme Court did not err in amending its initial decision and order to deny those branches of the defendant's motion which were to dismiss counts seven, eight, and nine of the indictment. A court possesses “inherent authority to rectify a prior error in dismissing an indictment” (People v. Bigwarfe, 128 A.D.3d 1170, 1171, 9 N.Y.S.3d 448 ; see People v. Russ, 292 A.D.2d 862, 739 N.Y.S.2d 512 ), and “where there is a clearly erroneous dismissal of an indictment or count thereof, it is unreasonable to foreclose a court from reconsidering its previous determination” (People v. Lynch, 162 A.D.2d 134, 134, 556 N.Y.S.2d 80 ; see People v. Frederick, 62 A.D.3d 612, 881 N.Y.S.2d 395, lv. granted 12 N.Y.3d 925, 884 N.Y.S.2d 706, 912 N.E.2d 1087 ; affd. 14 N.Y.3d 913, 905 N.Y.S.2d 533, 931 N.E.2d 517 ; People v. Contreras, 192 A.D.2d 417, 596 N.Y.S.2d 393 ), even in the absence of a formal motion for leave to reargue by the People (see People v. Bigwarfe, 128 A.D.3d 1170, 9 N.Y.S.3d 448 ; People v. Rosa, 265 A.D.2d 167, 696 N.Y.S.2d 138 ). Furthermore, under the facts of this case, there was no constitutional or statutory impediment to the court's power to promptly modify its prior determination to dismiss the indictment and to thereby correct the previous error (see People v. Rosa, 265 A.D.2d 167, 696 N.Y.S.2d 138 ; People v. Lynch, 162 A.D.2d 134, 556 N.Y.S.2d 80 ; see also Matter of Lionel F., 76 N.Y.2d 747, 559 N.Y.S.2d 228, 558 N.E.2d 30 ).
Here, the Supreme Court recognized the error only one day after issuing the initial decision and order, well within the time period during which, for example, a motion for leave to reargue could have been made and before the People even had a reasonable opportunity to make such a motion. Moreover, while any present challenge to the court's determination of the statutory speedy trial issue in the amended decision and order was forfeited by the defendant's knowing, voluntary, and intelligent plea of guilty (see People v. O'Brien, 56 N.Y.2d 1009, 453 N.Y.S.2d 638, 439 N.E.2d 354 ; People v. Briggs, 123 A.D.3d 1051, 999 N.Y.S.2d 480 ; People v. Bediako, 119 A.D.3d 598, 987 N.Y.S.2d 895 ; People v. Sze, 113 A.D.3d 795, 978 N.Y.S.2d 879 ), we note, in any event, that the error in initially dismissing counts seven, eight, and nine based on an alleged statutory speedy trial violation was clearly apparent from the documents in the court file. Accordingly, the prompt issuance of the amended decision and order correcting the prior mistake in this case was not improper or jurisdictionally defective.
In reaching the opposite conclusion, our dissenting colleague does not dispute that the hearing court was factually correct in determining that the second felony complaint in this case was filed approximately six months after the first, and thus that the criminal charges emanating from that second felony complaint were not subject to a valid dismissal on statutory speedy trial grounds. Rather, relying upon several decisions which accurately recite the general proposition that a trial court loses jurisdiction to correct its own previous, nonclerical errors once final judgment has been rendered or sentence has commenced in a criminal action (see e.g. People v. Richardson, 100 N.Y.2d 847, 767 N.Y.S.2d 384, 799 N.E.2d 607 ; Matter of Campbell v. Pesce, 60 N.Y.2d 165, 468 N.Y.S.2d 865, 456 N.E.2d 806 ; see also CPL 430.10 ), the dissent concludes that, once the hearing court in this case issued its initial determination dismissing the indictment, it lacked the authority to correct that determination on the following day to accord with the true facts of the case. However, the relevant decisions specifically addressing the timely correction of errors in orders dismissing indictments have uniformly determined that there is no impediment to the making of such corrections.
For example, in People v. Bigwarfe, 128 A.D.3d 1170, 9 N.Y.S.3d 448, as in this case, the indictment contained two sets of criminal charges that arose from distinct incidents occurring on different dates, and were the subject of separate accusatory instruments filed at different times. The defendant therein moved to dismiss the entire indictment on the ground that his statutory right to a speedy trial had been violated. The trial court initially granted the motion and dismissed the indictment. However, although no formal motion for leave to reargue had been made, the court reconsidered the dismissal upon a letter request by the prosecution, and thereafter reinstated the counts of the indictment that were set forth in the second accusatory instrument, since no CPL 30.30 violation had occurred as to them. In affirming the court's determination, the Appellate Division, Third Department, held that the reinstatement of the counts constituted a proper exercise of the court's “inherent authority to rectify a prior error in dismissing an indictment” (id. at 1171 ). Accordingly, the decision in Bigwarfe fully supports an affirmance in the present case. Moreover, Appellate Division decisions in the First Department and the Fourth Department similarly have recognized a trial court's inherent power to timely rectify a prior error by reinstating a previously dismissed indictment (see People v. Russ, 292 A.D.2d 862, 739 N.Y.S.2d 512 ; People v. Rosa, 265 A.D.2d 167, 696 N.Y.S.2d 138 ; People v. Lynch, 162 A.D.2d 134, 556 N.Y.S.2d 80 ).
The dissent posits that the foregoing decisions are distinguishable from the present case because they did not involve sua sponte corrective orders. However, no formal motion to correct the error was made in People v. Bigwarfe or in People v. Rosa, and the dissent does not cite any statutory or decisional authority requiring the making of either a formal motion or an informal application as a precondition to the court's corrective action. Nor does the dissent point to any logical basis for engrafting such a requirement upon the court's exercise of its inherent powers. In this regard, we decline to adopt the incongruous proposition that a court may exercise its well- established inherent power to correct errors in its orders only when a party affirmatively requests that it do so.
Additionally, there is a more fundamental problem in the dissent's attempt to distinguish the foregoing decisions from the present case on the basis that the court acted sua sponte here. If, as the dissent maintains, the Supreme Court lost all jurisdiction to act in this matter once it issued the order dismissing the entire indictment pursuant to CPL 30.30, then that court would be powerless to correct any errors in its order, regardless of whether it sought to do so on its own motion in...
To continue reading
Request your trial