People v. Holloway
| Decision Date | 07 March 1997 |
| Citation | 662 N.Y.S.2d 677,173 Misc.2d 857 |
| Parties | , 1997 N.Y. Slip Op. 97,470 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Plaintiff, v. Addison L. HOLLOWAY, Defendant. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court |
Jerome K. Frost, Public Defender of Rensselaer County (Philip J. Landry III, of counsel), for defendant.
Kenneth R. Bruno, Acting District Attorney of Rensselaer County (Joel Abelove, of counsel), for plaintiff.
An indictment has been filed accusing the Defendant, Addison L. Holloway, of Sodomy in the First Degree (Penal Law § 130.50[1] ). The charge is that the Defendant, then fourteen years of age, forcibly sodomized a four-year-old female victim during the Christmas holiday in 1995.
Claiming that the present prosecution in superior court is barred by a prior juvenile delinquency adjudication in the Family Court, the Defendant now moves to dismiss the indictment upon statutory and constitutional principles of previous prosecution and former jeopardy (U.S. Const. 5th, 14 Amends.; N.Y. Constitution, Art. 1, § 6; CPL Art. 40).
The factual and procedural context is not in dispute and may be briefly stated.
This indictment was filed on August 6, 1996 in the County Court, Rensselaer County, accusing the Defendant of Sodomy in the First Degree, a crime for which, as a fourteen-year old, he could be held criminally responsible as a juvenile offender (Penal Law, §§ 10.00(18), 30.00 [1], [2]). The indictment alleges that sometime around Christmas of 1995, at 23 Thirteenth Street, Troy, Rensselaer County, the Defendant engaged in deviate sexual intercourse with another person by forcible compulsion in that he forcibly put his penis in the mouth of a girl whose date of birth is April 24, 1991.
On August 9, 1996, the Defendant was arraigned before the Honorable Patrick J. McGrath, Judge of the County Court, on the indictment. The Defendant entered a plea of Not Guilty, was continued on posted bail in the amount of Twenty-Five Hundred Dollars ($2,500.00), and the matter was adjourned for all purposes.
On February 20, 1996, some five and one-half months prior to the filing of the instant indictment, a designated Family Court Act petition, Docket No. E-0002-96 had been filed in the Family Court, Rensselaer County, charging the Defendant with the offense of Sodomy in the First Degree, a designated Class B violent felony offense, in violation of Penal Law § 130.50(1). The petition alleged, inter alia, that during December 1995 or January 1996, the Defendant engaged in deviate sexual contact with another person who was less than eleven years old, specifically that the Defendant placed his penis into the mouth of Ariel Stickelmeyer, whose date of birth is April 24, 1991.
On April 2, 1996, with his law guardian, Paul W. Martineau, Jr., the Defendant appeared before the Family Court, Rensselaer County for a fact-finding hearing on the charge of Sodomy in the First Degree. The Defendant entered an admission on the record to an attempt to that charge, waived the dispositional hearing, and was placed with the New York State Division for Youth for a term of eighteen months pursuant to Article 3 of the Family Court Act. 1
There is no dispute, indeed, that the conduct alleged in the instant indictment is the very same conduct involving the same victim and the same time frame as was alleged in the petition and finally adjudicated in the Family Court.
The issue is, then, whether statutory and constitutional principles regarding previous prosecution and former jeopardy would now bar prosecution of the instant indictment.
Generally, statutes relating to jurisdiction of courts over juvenile delinquents and providing for the procedure in such courts have been characterized as paternal and benevolent. The fundamental philosophy of the juvenile court laws was that a delinquent child is to be considered and treated not as a criminal, but as a person requiring care, education and protection. Thus, proceedings in juvenile courts were originally held to be noncriminal in nature, and therefore none of the constitutional guarantees afforded adults charged with a crime were deemed applicable (see, 47 AM JUR 2d, Juvenile Courts and Delinquent and Dependent Children § 34). However, recognizing that there was a gap between the originally benign conception of the juvenile court system and its realities, and eschewing the civil label of convenience attached to such proceedings in the past, the United States Supreme Court in In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed.2d 527, held that certain constitutional guarantees associated with traditional criminal prosecution, including notice of charges, right to counsel, right to confrontation and the privilege against self-incrimination were applicable in juvenile delinquency proceedings which might lead to commitment in a state institution.
With respect to the applicability of former prosecution and double jeopardy principles in juvenile court proceedings, the early and traditional view was that such proceedings, being noncriminal and nonpenal, did not involve any jeopardy, and hence, could not give rise to a bar (47 Am Jur 2d, § 34, op. cit.). That, however, was resolved as a matter of federal constitutional law by the United States Supreme Court in 1975 when it decided Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 95 S.Ct. 1779, 44 L.Ed.2d 346, holding that jeopardy does attach within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment, as applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, in an adjudicatory delinquency proceeding in juvenile court.
In the Breed case the Supreme Court held that the prosecution of the respondent minor in state superior court for the crime of robbery after the case had been transferred to that court following an adjudicatory proceeding in the Juvenile Court, violated the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. There, the Juvenile Court petition alleged that a 17-year-old had committed acts which if done by an adult would constitute the crime of robbery. In a subsequent adjudicatory proceeding, the Juvenile Court found the allegations of the petition were true. At the dispositional hearing, the Juvenile Court later determined that the youth was unfit for treatment as a juvenile and ordered that he be prosecuted as an adult in Superior Court.
The Supreme Court observed that there was no dispute that the respondent juvenile was put in jeopardy by the proceedings in Superior Court and that the petition filed in the Juvenile Court and the information filed in the Superior Court related to the very same offense within the meaning of the constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy. The Court concluded that it was simply too late to say that a juvenile was not put in jeopardy at a proceeding whose object is to determine whether he has committed acts that violated a criminal law and whose potential consequences included both the stigma inherent in such a determination and a significant deprivation of liberty. The Court went on to reject the argument that the respondent's transfer from Juvenile Court, where there had been no placement or punishment, to superior court involved merely "continuing jeopardy" and did not subject him to double jeopardy. The Court emphasized that it is not only the risk of twice being punished but the burden of twice defending oneself that the Constitution proscribes. The Court also rejected the argument that the flexibility and informality of Juvenile Court proceedings would be sacrificed and excessive administrative burdens imposed on the Juvenile Court system by applying double jeopardy principles in that context. Upon remand, the United States Court of Appeals ordered that the District Court issue a writ of habeas corpus directing the State court to vacate the adult conviction of the respondent.
Several New York decisions had anticipated the Supreme Court's holding in Breed, and held that continued or renewed proceedings in Family Court regarding the same underlying conduct, were barred by Federal and State constitutional prohibitions against double jeopardy. For example, in Fonseca v. Judges of Family Court, 59 Misc.2d 492, 299 N.Y.S.2d 493, it was held that the judges of the Family Court were barred by federal and State constitutional prohibitions against double jeopardy...
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People v. Morel
...are also civil in nature, can result in a respondent's incarceration, and the Breed rule applies to these cases. People v. Holloway, 173 Misc.2d 857, 860–61, 662 N.Y.S.2d 677 (Sup. Ct. Renssalaer Co.1997). Moreover, in 1982, pursuant to Family Court Act § 303.2, as a matter of state law, th......