People v. Wright
| Decision Date | 05 June 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 105,105 |
| Citation | 2012 NY Slip Op 04273 |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | The People & c., Respondent, v. Ledarrius Wright, Appellant. |
Barbara Zolot, for appellant.
Christopher P. Marinelli, for respondent.
The question presented is whether Penal Law § 70.25 (2) precludes the imposition of consecutive sentences for defendant's convictions of murder in the first degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. We hold that under the circumstances presented here, because the offense of possessing a gun with unlawful intent was only completed upondefendant's commission of the ensuing substantive crime of shooting the victims, consecutive sentencing is prohibited.
In the early morning hours of September 5, 2005 on West 133rd Street in Manhattan, after a night of escalating altercations between two groups — one including defendant Ledarrius Wright and the other including Doneil Ambrister and Yvette Duncan — defendant pulled out a gun and shot Ambrister and Duncan. Both victims were killed. Several eyewitnesses named defendant as the assailant and, after nearly two years in hiding, defendant was apprehended in 2007.
A New York County grand jury charged defendant with two counts of murder in the first degree (Penal Law § 125.27 [1] [a] [viii]), two counts of murder in the second degree (Penal Law § 125.25 [1]) and one count each of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree (Penal Law § 265.03 [2]) and criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree (Penal Law § 265.02 [4]). Supreme Court dismissed the latter charge. Along with the charge of second degree criminal possession of a weapon, the court submitted the murder one counts to the jury with the murder two counts in the alternative. As relevant to the weapon possession charge, the prosecutor argued in summation:
"[Defendant] should be convicted [of second degree criminal possession of a weapon] because he had a loaded and operable gun that he fired at others . . . There's no doubt about his intent since he actually did use the gun unlawfully against two others."
The jury convicted defendant of one count of first-degree murder for the intentional killing of Ambrister, accompanied by the killing of Duncan with the intent to cause her serious injury or death, and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon 1 . It acquitted defendant of the other charges based on the intentional killing of Duncan. Supreme Court sentenced defendant to consecutive prison terms of 25 years to life for first-degree murder and 15years for possession of a weapon, for an aggregate term of 40 years to life. The court's theory for imposing consecutive sentences was that defendant's "intention to possess the weapon to bring out on the street to use it both against Doneil Ambrister and also against Yvette Duncan is separate and distinct from the intentional killing of Doneil Ambrister."
Defendant appealed, arguing that the court erred in imposing consecutive sentences because the charge of possession of a weapon was not unrelated to the killings and "the People did not allege or prove that defendant possessed a gun with a separate intent to use it unlawfully against another."
The Appellate Division, with one Justice dissenting, affirmed the sentence. The majority held that "[b]ecause there is no overlap of statutory elements in the crimes committed by the defendant, the imposition of consecutive sentences was lawful" (People v Wright, 87 AD3d 229, 230 [1st Dept 2011]). The court impugned defendant's reliance on our decision in People v Hamilton (4 NY3d 654 [2005]), which held that consecutive sentencing on a second degree weapon possession charge required proof of an intent unrelated to the intent to shoot the victims (see id. at 658), asserting that our more recent decisions such as People v McKnight (16 NY3d 43 [2010]) and People v Frazier (16 NY3d 36 [2010]) were a "sub silentio rejection" of that case (Wright, 87 AD3d at 232).
Declaring Hamilton "indistinguishable and dispositive of the sentencing issue" (id. at 235), however, the dissenting Justice would have modified Supreme Court's order to the extent of ordering that the sentences run concurrently. The dissent opined that "[i]n the absence of proof of a distinct intent to use the gun unlawfully [apart from the shootings], the weapon count overlapped the charges arising out of the shooting of the two victims" (id. at 236). The dissenting Justice granted defendant leave to appeal, and we now modify to direct that the sentences run concurrently.
Under Penal Law § 70.25 (2), a court must impose concurrent sentences "for two or more offenses committed through a single act or omission, or through an act or omission which in itself constituted one of the offenses and also was a material element of the other." "Thus, sentences imposed for two or more offenses may not run consecutively: (1) where a single act constitutes two offenses, or (2) where a single act constitutes one of the offenses and a material element of the other" (People v Laureano, 87 NY2d 640, 643 [1996]). "The defendant benefits if either prong is present, and the prosecution's burden is to countermand both prongs" (People v Day, 73 NY2d 208, 211 [1989]).
An analysis of whether concurrent sentences are required begins with an examination of "the statutory definitions of the crimes for which defendant has been convicted" (Laureano, 87 NY2d at 643). In Laureano, we explained:
"Because both prongs of Penal Law 70.25 (2) refer to the that is, the 'actus reus' that constitutes the offense, thecourt must determine whether the 'actus reus' element is, by definition, the same for both offenses (under the first prong of the statute), or if the actus reus for one offense is, by definition, a material element of the second offense (under the second prong). If the statutory elements do overlap under either prong of the statute, the People may yet establish the legality of consecutive sentencing by showing that the committed by defendant were separate and distinct acts" (id. at 643 [internal citations omitted] [emphasis in original]).
In People v McKnight (16 NY3d 43 [2010]), we applied the Laureano framework to assess the legality of consecutive sentencing in the context of an attempted crime. The defendant and another gunman had fired a total of 10 shots at two victims — Smith and Lingard — with two bullets striking and killing Smith (see id. at 45). Lingard was shot three times but survived (see id.). The defendant, convicted of first degree murder and second degree attempted murder, was sentenced respectively to consecutive terms of 25 years to life and 20 years with five years postrelease supervision (see id. at 46). In upholding defendant's consecutive sentences, we explained that "[t]he actus reus of the murder of Smith was the firing of the two shots that caused the death of a third person [i.e., Smith]; and the actus reus of the attempted murder of Lingard was the firing of the other eight shots, which either hit no one or hit Lingard" (id. at 48 []). We reasoned that:
(id. at 49, quoting People v Frazier, 16 NY3d 36, 41 [2010] [internal citations omitted] [emphasis added]).
Similarly, in Frazier, decided the same day as McKnight, we found it within the sentencing court's discretion to impose consecutive sentences for the defendant's burglary and grand larceny convictions because the two "statutes do not contain the same actus reus" (16NY3d at 41). As the "crimes at issue [were] separate offenses that were committed through separate acts," and neither offense was "a material element of the other," we concluded that concurrent sentencing was not required (id.). Neither McKnight nor Frazier constituted a "sub silentio rejection" of Hamilton, as stated by the majority below (Wright, 87 AD3d at 232), as neither case involved the propriety of consecutive sentencing where one of the crimes is a weapon possession offense.
In our caselaw addressing the propriety of consecutive sentencing in the context of weapon possession offenses we have employed a different framework that appropriately reflects the heightened level of integration between the possession and the ensuing substantive crime for which the weapon was used (see Hamilton, 4 NY3d at 658-659; People v Salcedo, 92 NY2d 1019, 1021-1022 [1998]; see also People v Brown, 80 NY2d 361, 364-365 [1992] []). In such cases, to determine whether a single act constituted both offenses under prong one of Penal Law § 70.25 (2), we have looked to when the crime of possession — necessarily encompassing both actus reus and mens rea elements — was completed (see Salcedo, 92 NY2d at 1022). Only where the act of possession is accomplished before the commission of the ensuing crime and with a mental state that both satisfies the statutory mens rea element and is discrete from that of the underlying crime may consecutive sentences be imposed (see id.; see also Hamilton, 4 NY3d at 658).
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