People v. Skyers
| Decision Date | 27 June 2019 |
| Docket Number | 109609 |
| Citation | 104 N.Y.S.3d 387,173 A.D.3d 1565 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Lennox SKYERS, Appellant. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
173 A.D.3d 1565
104 N.Y.S.3d 387
The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent,
v.
Lennox SKYERS, Appellant.
109609
Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, New York.
Calendar Date: June 5, 2019
Decided and Entered: June 27, 2019
Law Office of William J. Reddy, New City (William J. Reddy of counsel), for appellant.
Andrew J. Wylie, District Attorney, Plattsburgh (Jeffrey C. Kehm of counsel), for respondent.
Before: Lynch, J.P., Clark, Mulvey, Aarons and Rumsey, JJ.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
Mulvey, J.
Appeal from a judgment of the County Court of Clinton County (Ryan, J.), rendered April 4, 2016, convicting defendant upon his plea of guilty of the crime of assault in the first degree (two counts).
Defendant, who was on probation at the time that the underlying offenses were committed, was charged in a 13–count indictment with various crimes including, insofar as is relevant here, two counts of assault in the first degree. Approximately three weeks prior to the scheduled trial, the People offered defendant an opportunity to plead guilty to two counts of assault in the first degree with a recommendation that he be sentenced as a second felony offender to concurrent prison terms of 13 years followed by five years of postrelease supervision. Defendant initially acquiesced to the People's offer but, midway through his plea allocution, defendant asserted that he was not guilty and that "[e]verything was an accident," prompting County Court to adjourn the matter pending trial.
Defendant reappeared in court the following day – once again indicating that he wished to go forward with the proposed plea agreement, which also would resolve defendant's probation violation. After assuring County Court that he had been afforded sufficient time to confer with counsel, defendant pleaded guilty to two counts of assault in the first degree, and the matter was adjourned for sentencing. When defendant returned to court approximately two months later and was given an opportunity to make a statement prior to sentencing, defendant expressed remorse for his crimes, stating that, on the day in question, he had "overdosed on some medications while [he] was intoxicated," he "wasn't in [his] right state of mind," he "wasn't trying to hurt anyone" and he "honestly [did not] recall what happened because after [he] took the medications [he] blacked out." County Court thereafter sentenced defendant to the contemplated concurrent terms of imprisonment, and this appeal ensued.
The statements made by defendant at sentencing, which raised the possibility of an intoxication defense and called into question the intent element of assault in the first degree (see
Penal Law § 120.10[1] ), were sufficient to...
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People v. Sykes
...quotation marks and citation omitted]) and, hence, did not impose a duty of further inquiry upon County Court (compare People v. Skyers, 173 A.D.3d 1565, 1565–1566, 104 N.Y.S.3d 387 [2019] ; People v. Chin, 160 A.D.3d 1038, 1039–1040, 73 N.Y.S.3d 685 [2018] ). To the extent that defendant's......
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