People v. King
| Decision Date | 29 March 2016 |
| Citation | 50 N.E.3d 869,2016 N.Y. Slip Op. 02278,27 N.Y.3d 147,31 N.Y.S.3d 402 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Urselina KING, Appellant. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Lynn W.L. Fahey, Appellate Advocates, New York City (Kendra L. Hutchinson of counsel), for appellant.
Kenneth P. Thompson, District Attorney, Brooklyn (Solomon Neubort and Leonard Joblove of counsel), for respondent.
Defendant was convicted, after a jury trial, of burglary in the first degree (Penal Law § 140.30[3] ) and assault in the second degree (Penal Law § 120.05[2] ) for events that occurred on March 9, 2008. On that date, defendant and an accomplice attacked the victim, ransacked her apartment and stole $300 from her purse. Defendant argues on this appeal that the trial court committed a mode of proceedings error when it discharged potential jurors on hardship grounds without conducting a sufficient inquiry into the particular hardship, and erred in precluding evidence of third-party culpability proffered by the defense that, according to defendant, would have demonstrated that other unidentified individuals had a motive to attack the victim. Defendant further argues that she was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel because trial counsel failed to object to certain improper statements made by the prosecutor during summation.
At trial, the victim testified that, at approximately 4:00 a.m. on March 9, 2008, she returned to her third-floor apartment after work. While she was unlocking her apartment door, a masked man and defendant (who was unmasked) appeared from a nearby stairwell. Defendant was brandishing a knife. The masked man struck the victim on the forehead with a gun, causing her to fall to the floor. Defendant stepped on the victim's stomach, grabbed the victim's keys and, along with the masked man, dragged the victim into her apartment. While inside, defendant cut the strap to the victim's purse, dumped the purse's contents and stole money. Defendant alternated between striking the victim and ransacking the apartment. At one point, defendant asked the victim if she was “willing to die for Tone”—a reference to Tony Mann, the victim's boyfriend and father of defendant's two children. The victim was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she received treatment for cheek and nasal fractures and other injuries to her face and head. Approximately a week after the incident, the victim picked the defendant out of a lineup and she was thereafter arrested.
The case proceeded to trial. Prior to voir dire, the court informed the panel that it expected the trial to last approximately five days, and stated that it recognized that for some of the prospective jurors five days may be a hardship because of family obligations or business commitments. It stated that if any of the prospective jurors had a hardship based on family or business obligations, the court could excuse them from the trial but not from jury duty, meaning that the excused prospective jurors would be returned to the jury room where they could be assigned to another case. The court asked those prospective jurors who had such hardships to raise their hands and directed them to the center aisle, at which point the court apprised them that “[t]he clerk will speak to you about your hardship.”
After those prospective jurors exited the courtroom, the court provided the remaining prospective jurors with a general synopsis of the charges that were brought against defendant, along with a general statement concerning the People's allegations and the defendant's alibi defense. The court then asked the remaining prospective jurors if any of them did not believe that they could be a fair and impartial juror. After excusing a couple prospective jurors, the court began the process of formal voir dire, which involved calling 16 names at random from the remaining prospective jurors and directing them to the jury box. Following questioning by the court and the attorneys, a jury was empaneled and sworn in.
The People thereafter presented their case, the theory of which was that defendant, jealous at having been left by Mann with whom she'd had two children, sought revenge against the victim. In her defense, defendant called three alibi witnesses, all of whom testified that defendant had returned home at 1:00 a.m. the day of the incident and remained there. Defendant also unsuccessfully sought to introduce third-party culpability evidence indicating that two men who were upset with Mann over a drug dispute, rather than defendant, had a motive for attacking the victim and burglarizing her apartment.
During summation, defense counsel attacked the credibility of the People's witnesses, including the victim, and steadfastly maintained that defendant's alibi defense had created reasonable doubt. The prosecutor argued in his summation that the case was about “jealousy” and “obsession” and “hell have [sic] no fury as a woman's scorn [sic].” He posited that and that by laying in wait on the stairs and “toying with her rival.”1 Defense counsel did not object to any of these statements.
The jury convicted defendant of burglary in the first degree and assault in the second degree. Defendant was sentenced to concurrent terms of nine years' imprisonment and five years' postrelease supervision on the burglary conviction, and seven years' imprisonment and three years' postrelease supervision on the assault conviction.
The Appellate Division affirmed in a 3–1 decision, holding, as relevant here, that defendant failed to preserve her contention that the trial court improperly discharged potential jurors based upon hardship without first conducting a sufficient inquiry, that the trial court correctly precluded as speculative so-called third-party culpability evidence and that, although certain of the prosecutor's summation statements improperly included gender stereotyping, the comments did not deprive defendant of a fair trial (110 A.D.3d 1005, 1006–1007, 973 N.Y.S.2d 353 [2d Dept.2013] ). The dissenting Justice would have reversed the judgment and ordered a new trial in the interest of justice on the ground that the prosecution's summation comments improperly appealed to gender bias and that certain comments that attacked defendant's alibi defense as having been devised in the last minute were unsupported by the record (see id. at 1007–1008, 973 N.Y.S.2d 353 [Hinds–Radix, J., dissenting] ).
A Judge of this Court granted defendant leave to appeal (23 N.Y.3d 1022, 992 N.Y.S.2d 804, 16 N.E.3d 1284 [2014] ) and we now affirm.
Defendant first contends that the trial court abdicated its judicial function by allowing prospective jurors to opt out of serving on the jury due to a hardship and delegated that function to the clerk and the prospective jurors. Defendant acknowledges that trial counsel failed to object to the court's procedure, so the issue presented is whether the court, assuming that the procedure was error in the first place, committed a mode of proceedings error that deprived defendant of her right to a jury trial under the supervision of a judge.
This Court may reach unpreserved questions of law “in a very narrow category of cases” where the errors “go to the essential validity of the process and are so fundamental that the entire trial is irreparably tainted” ( People v. Kelly, 5 N.Y.3d 116, 119–120, 799 N.Y.S.2d 763, 832 N.E.2d 1179 [2005] ; see People v. Ahmed, 66 N.Y.2d 307, 496 N.Y.S.2d 984, 487 N.E.2d 894 [1985], rearg. denied 67 N.Y.2d 647, 499 N.Y.S.2d 1031, 490 N.E.2d 558 [1986] ). Errors contained in this “tightly circumscribed class” do not require preservation (Kelly, 5 N.Y.3d at 120, 799 N.Y.S.2d 763, 832 N.E.2d 1179 ). We found such an error in Ahmed, where the trial judge absented himself and had delegated certain functions to the law secretary during jury deliberations (see Ahmed, 66 N.Y.2d at 310, 496 N.Y.S.2d 984, 487 N.E.2d 894 ). We concluded that an issue of law was presented for our review, notwithstanding the defendant's failure to timely object to the procedure, because the trial judge's “failure ... to retain control of deliberations” implicated “the organization of the court or the mode of proceedings prescribed by law” (id. [citation omitted] ). Upon reaching the merits, we held that the actions of the trial judge, including his delegation of certain responsibilities to his law secretary, “deprived defendant of his right to a proper trial by jury” (id. at 311, 496 N.Y.S.2d 984, 487 N.E.2d 894 ).
Years later in People v. Toliver, 89 N.Y.2d 843, 652 N.Y.S.2d 728, 675 N.E.2d 463 (1996), we acknowledged that “[t]he presence of and supervision by a Judge constitutes an integral component of the right to a jury trial” (id. at 844, 652 N.Y.S.2d 728, 675 N.E.2d 463, citing Ahmed, 66 N.Y.2d at 311–312, 496 N.Y.S.2d 984, 487 N.E.2d 894 ). In Toliver, the trial judge absented himself from portions of the actual voir dire examination of the jurors and questioning by the attorneys. We held that this absence violated the defendant's “fundamental right to have a Judge preside over and supervise the voir dire proceedings while prospective jurors are being questioned regarding their qualifications,” and that the trial judge's relinquishment of control over the proceedings or delegation of the duty to supervise deprived defendant of his right to a jury trial (Toliver, 89 N.Y.2d at 844, 652 N.Y.S.2d 728, 675 N.E.2d 463 [emphasis supplied] ). The trial judge's absence from actual voir dire constituted reversible error because “it is the Judge who is the ultimate arbiter of a prospective juror's fitness to serve” (id. at 845, 652 N.Y.S.2d 728, 675 N.E.2d 463, citing CPL 270.20 [...
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