Case ID: ad2d_191/html/0287-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Juan Rodriguez, Appellant.
    [595 NYS2d 29]
   —Judgment, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Martin Marcus, J., at hearing; Richard Lee Price, J., at trial and sentence), rendered July 18, 1991, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the fourth degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a prison term of 4 to 8 years, unanimously modified, on the law, the sentence vacated, and the matter remanded for resentencing, and otherwise affirmed.

To serve as the basis for predicate status, a sentence must have been rendered before the commission of the instant underlying felony (Penal Law § 70.06 [1] [b] [ii]). The People do not dispute that the predicate sentence at bar was rendered almost a year after the commission of the instant underlying felony. That this objection was not raised at sentence, is not a bar to defendant’s present consideration (see, e.g., People v Bell, 173 AD2d 218, 219, lv denied 78 NY2d 962). Simply stated, there never was a conviction which could serve as a valid predicate conviction. Accordingly, the predicate felony information was defective as a matter of law.

We have considered the defendant’s remaining argument, and find it to be without merit. Concur — Sullivan, J. P., Carro, Wallach and Kupferman, JJ.