People v. Pride
| Decision Date | 16 January 1958 |
| Citation | 3 N.Y.2d 545,170 N.Y.S.2d 321 |
| Parties | , 147 N.E.2d 719 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Charles PRIDE, Appellant. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Wilbur P. Trammell, Buffalo, for appellant.
John F. Dwyer, Dist. Atty., Buffalo (Robert A. Burrell, Buffalo, of counsel), for respondent.
Defendant was convicted of assault in the third degree after a jury trial in the City Court of Buffalo. He commenced an appeal to the Supreme Court, Erie County (see Buffalo City Court Act, § 76, Laws 1909, c. 570, L.1951, ch. 653), by filing a notice and affidavit of appeal with the clerk of the City Court and serving copies thereof upon the District Attorney. Thereafter, defendant moved in the Supreme Court for an order requiring that a transcript of the minutes of the trial proceedings be made available to him without charge, inasmuch as the estimated cost to the defendant of $450 would be prohibitive in light of his financial circumstances. Affidavits submitted in his behalf averred that defendant was totally without funds. An accompanying attorney's affidavit alleged that the conviction was contrary to the weight of evidence and that prejudicial errors had been committed by the trial court.
In response the District Attorney argued that defendant had served no return upon him as required by section 761 of the Code of Criminal Procedure; that by virtue of section 49 of the Buffalo City Court Act an appellant who requires a return of the evidence must pay for it in advance at the rate stipulated in the act, and that the Code of Criminal Procedure contains no provision for appeals in forma pauperis. Defendant's motion was denied.
Subsequently, the People moved in the Supreme Court to have the return served upon the District Attorney or, in default of such service, to dismiss the appeal. On the return date of this motion defendant renewed his earlier request that the court order that a copy of the trial minutes be made available to him without the imposition of fees in order to make it possible for him to serve the necessary return upon the District Attorney. After argument the court granted the People's motion to dismiss, thereby reaffirming its earlier decision that the defendant could not be exempted from the fee requirement contained in section 49 of the Buffalo City Court Act. The appeal is taken from that order.
The statutory provisions pertinent here can be briefly described.
As pointed out by the People, section 761 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that in an appeal from a court of special sessions in a county outside the city of New York the appellant must serve upon the District Attorney a copy of the return with or before the notice of argument. Failure to comply renders the appeal dismissible.
By the language of section 756 of the Code, the Buffalo City Court, as a court of special sessions outside the city of New York, is obligated to make a return to all the matters stated in the affidavit of appeal and to cause the return to be filed in the office of the county clerk within 10 days after service of the affidavit. The return contemplated by this section and by section 761 is a report sufficiently informative and comprehensive to permit the appellate court to review the error or errors assigned. Accordingly, where the claim is that the evidence adduced did not warrant a conviction, as was here contended, the return perforce would include the evidence on the trial. People v. Giles, 152 N.Y. 136, 139-141, 46 N.E. 326, 327-328; see People v. Cittrola, 213 App.Div. 674, 210 N.Y.S. 21. Express provision in made for enforcement of the obligation created by section 756 in the section following it. Section 757 states that if a return is not timely made the county court (here the Supreme Court sat as the appellate court) or a judge thereof may order that such a return be made within a reasonable time.
Under the circumstances, the dismissal of defendant's appeal, flowing in fact from his inability, due to indigence, to serve the necessary return upon the District Attorney, amounted to a denial of constitutional rights and as such an error of law.
Our State has always regarded the right to appellate review in criminal matters an integral part of our judicial system and treated it as such. Since long before the Supreme Court's pronouncement (Griffin v. People of the State of Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 76 S.Ct. 585, 100 L.Ed. 891), it has been the consistent policy of our courts to preserve and promote that right as an effective, if imperfect, safeguard against impropriety or error in the trial of causes. This policy has been particularly manifest on a number of occasions where the failure to provide sufficiently comprehensive reports of the proceedings at the initial stage of litigation threatened to render nugatory the right to appeal (People v. Giles, 152 N.Y. 136, 138-140, 46 N.E. 326, 327-328, supra; People v. Schenkel, 256 N.Y. 539, 177 N.E. 131; People v. Wilkins, 281 N.Y. 224, 225, 22 N.E.2d 349; People v. Cittrola, 213 App.Div. 674, 676-677, 210 N.Y.S. 21, 22-23, supra; People v. Hines, 57 App.Div. 419, 68 N.Y.S. 276). In the instances cited the lower courts had failed to make and preserve an adequate record of the proceedings at the trial level. Unequivocally and with emphasis upon the importance and fundamental nature of the right to appellate review, the courts on each occasion held that the making of such a record and its availability to defendant-appellant were absolute requisites and concomitants of the right to review and that adequate returns would have to be made by the lower courts and defendant granted access to them though this requirement was not expressly mandated by the pertinent statute (People v. Giles, supra, 152 N.Y. at page 139, 46 N.E. at page 327) and though the expense of preparing such a record might fall upon the Trial Judge himself (People v. Schenkel, supra).
It is a facile and logical progression, one that would have been made even without the assistance of constitutional pronouncements, from the principle underlying the above-cited cases to the decision required here. However, now this decision is for the most part made for us, not alone as a matter of our own public policy, but as one of constitutional necessity.
By virtue of section 761 it is a condition precedent to review of the defendant's conviction that a return be served upon the District Attorney.
Because of the errors claimed, that return would have to contain the evidence adduced on the trial. Defendant is financially unable to purchase a verbatim...
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