Case Title: The People v. Lynette Caban

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: new-york

Court: New York Appellate Court

Date: 2010-04-01T00:00:00Z

Document:
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This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before
publication in the New York Reports.
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No. 42  
The People &c., 
            Appellant,
        v. 
Lynette Caban, 
            Respondent.
Marc Krupnick, for appellant.
Frances A. Gallagher, for respondent.
SMITH, J.:
Defendant, while backing her car, hit and killed a
pedestrian.  At the time of that event, defendant's license to
drive had been suspended, because of an earlier incident with
some noticeable similarities to the later, fatal one.  Defendant
was convicted of criminally negligent homicide, after a trial in
which the trial court admitted into evidence the fact of her
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license suspension.  We hold that this evidence was properly
admitted.
I
On January 2, 2003, defendant, driving on Third Avenue
in Manhattan, stopped her car and backed it up to let her
passengers out at a pizza shop.  She backed too quickly, and
failed to see an elderly woman, Francesca Maytin, who was
crossing the avenue at or near a crosswalk.  The car hit Maytin,
who died later that day.
This was not the first time defendant had backed a car
carelessly.  Three months earlier, on October 3, 2002, her car
was illegally parked at a bus stop, and a police officer began to
write a ticket.  Arriving at her car, defendant sought to escape
the parking ticket by jumping into the car and backing away
quickly -- going, according to the People's description, into a
busy intersection in the vicinity of a school at 8:30 in the
morning.  Her escape was thwarted when a bus blocked her path,
and she received four summonses, including one for unsafe backing
and one for failing to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk.  Her
license to drive was suspended as a result.
Before defendant's trial, the People sought permission
to put into evidence the details of the October 3 incident. 
Supreme Court rejected that request, but the People were allowed
to, and did, show that defendant's license had been suspended and
that it remained so on the day of the fatal event.  Defendant,
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convicted of criminally negligent homicide, appealed to the
Appellate Division, which reversed, holding that evidence of the
license suspension should not have been admitted (People v Caban,
51 AD3d 455 [1st Dept 2008]).  A Judge of this Court granted the
People leave to appeal, and we now reverse the Appellate
Division's order.
II
We must first decide whether the alleged error in
admitting the license suspension was preserved for appellate
review.  Taking the opposite position from the one she took in
the Appellate Division, defendant now argues that it was not. 
The reason for the change is that, under our precedents, an
Appellate Division reversal that is based on an unpreserved error
is considered an exercise of the Appellate Division's interest of
justice power, not reviewable in our Court (People v Baumann &
Sons Buses, Inc., 6 NY3d 404, 406-407 [2006]; People v Fava, 58
NY2d 807 [1983]).  Thus, if defendant failed to preserve the
alleged error, she would benefit from her mistake, for we would
be required to dismiss the People's appeal.
We conclude that the alleged error was preserved,
though the relevant record is a bit complicated.  The People
moved before trial for the admission of evidence about the
October 3, 2002 incident, and the trial court denied the motion
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insofar as it related to the People's case in chief.  The parties
interpreted this ruling differently: The prosecutor thought she
was not barred from introducing, on her case in chief, proof that
defendant's license was suspended, while defense counsel thought
that the court's ruling excluded that evidence also.  The
conversation in which the parties disagreed was off the record,
but was recited to the court on the record by the prosecutor, who
asked the court for clarification; the court resolved the
ambiguity in the People's favor.  It is true that the defense
lawyers never said on the record "we object to this evidence,"
but they did not have to, because their objection was clear from
the prosecutor's summary of their position.
Because the trial judge was made aware, before he ruled
on the issue, that the defense wanted him to rule otherwise,
preservation was adequate.  The Appellate Division's reversal was
therefore based on a question of law that we may review.
III
Defendant's argument, which the Appellate Division
accepted, is that her license suspension was irrelevant to her
guilt or innocence.  In defendant's view, the license suspension
sheds no light on whether she was criminally negligent in causing
Maytin's death, but only served to prejudice the jury against her
as someone who violated the law by driving illegally.  We reject
this argument, and conclude that the license suspension was
relevant to the issue of criminal negligence. 
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Criminal negligence is defined by Penal Law § 15.05
(4):
"A person acts with criminal negligence with
respect to a result or to a circumstance
described by a statute defining an offense
when he fails to perceive a substantial and
unjustifiable risk that such result will
occur or that such circumstance exists.  The
risk must be of such nature and degree that
the failure to perceive it constitutes a
gross deviation from the standard of care
that a reasonable person would observe in the
situation."
Thus the jury in this case had to consider not only
whether defendant failed to perceive "a substantial and
unjustifiable risk" that her careless driving would kill someone,
but also whether that failure was "a gross deviation from the
standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the
situation."  In other words, the jury not only had to decide
whether defendant was at fault, but also had to consider how much
she was at fault.  The license suspension was relevant to this
question, because a jury could find that it proved defendant to
be more negligent than the other evidence showed her to be.
A jury could find that it is unreasonable to back up
quickly into a crosswalk, without checking carefully to be sure
that no one is in the way; but that it is even more unreasonable
to do so when the state has forbidden the driver from driving at
all.  A jury could find that the license suspension should, if it
did not keep defendant off the road, at least have prompted her
to pay more attention to safety while she was driving, and that
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in failing to do so she deviated grossly from what a reasonable
person would have done.
While a license suspension is, as a general
proposition, relevant to the issue of criminal negligence, that
does not mean evidence of a suspension is admissible whenever
criminal negligence is in issue.  Evidence, though relevant, may
be excluded where "its probative value is substantially
outweighed by the danger that it will unfairly prejudice the
other side or mislead the jury" (People v Scarola, 71 NY2d 769,
777 [1988]).  That danger is not present here.  Defendant would
have a better argument for exclusion if her license had been
suspended, for example, for failure to pay parking tickets.  But
it was not.  It was suspended for conduct frighteningly similar
to the conduct that caused Francesca Maytin's death -- backing
unsafely into a crosswalk.  If the jury inferred from the license
suspension that defendant should have known that it was unsafe
for her to drive, the jury was not misled.
The admission of the license suspension, to the extent
it informed the jury about defendant's earlier misbehavior, did
not violate the familiar rule that a defendant's uncharged crimes
or bad acts are generally inadmissible when they serve only to
show the defendant's criminal propensity (People v Molineux, 168
NY 264 [1901]).  When the issue is criminal negligence, a prior
similar act for which defendant has been punished shows more than
propensity; a defendant who is repeatedly negligent in the same
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way may be found to be unable or unwilling to learn from her
mistakes -- and thus to be guilty not just of deviation, but of
"gross deviation," from reasonable care.  The prior conduct is
thus directly relevant to the extent of defendant's negligence in
the case on trial -- to her mens rea.
The trial court did not err by allowing the fact of
defendant's license suspension into evidence. 
IV
As an alternative ground for affirming the Appellate
Division's order, defendant argues that the trial court violated
the rule of People v O'Rama (78 NY2d 270 [1991]) and other cases
(see People v Kisoon, 8 NY3d 129 [2007]; People v Tabb, 13 NY3d
852 [2009]) by failing to give defense counsel meaningful notice
of notes sent by the jury during its deliberations.  This
argument was not presented to the trial court or to the Appellate
Division, but defendant argues that the O'Rama violation was a
"mode of proceedings" error, as to which no preservation is
required.  Since the Appellate Division had no opportunity to
consider this argument, we remit to that court so that it may do
so, and may consider any other issues that are now proper for its
review.
* * *
Accordingly, the order appealed from should be reversed
and the case remitted to the Appellate Division for consideration
of issues now appropriate for that court's review, including
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issues raised but not determined on the appeal to that court.
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Order reversed and case remitted to the Appellate Division, First
Department, for consideration of issues now appropriate for that
court's review, including issues raised but not determined on the
appeal to that court.  Opinion by Judge Smith.  Chief Judge
Lippman and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo, Read, Pigott and Jones
concur.
Decided April 1, 2010