Title: People v. Acevedo; People v. Collado

State: new-york

Issuer: New York Appellate Court

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. 129  
The People &c.,
            Appellant,
        v.
Benito Acevedo,
            Respondent.
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No. 130  
The People &c.,
            Appellant,
        v.
Dionis Collado,
            Respondent.
Case No. 129:
Dana Poole, for appellant.
Jan Hoth, for respondent.
Case No. 130:
Dana Poole, for appellant.
Bruce D. Austern, for respondent.
LIPPMAN, Chief Judge:
The threshold, and we believe dispositive, issue on
these appeals is whether a resentencing sought by a defendant to
correct an illegally lenient sentence is effective to temporally
resituate the sentence and thus alter the underlying conviction's
utility as a predicate for enhanced sentencing.  This common
issue arises from the following facts in each of the above-
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No. 129 & 130
captioned matters.
People v Acevedo 
In 2006, Mr. Acevedo was convicted of criminal sale of
a controlled substance in the third degree and possession of a
controlled substance in the third degree and sentenced as a
predicate felony offender with a prior violent felony to a prison
term of six years and three years of post-release supervision
(PRS).  The predicate conviction for Acevedo's 2006 sentence was
one for attempted robbery in the second degree for which Acevedo
was originally sentenced in accordance with his plea bargain to a
determinate prison term of four years in 2001.  Omitted from the
2001 sentence was the statutorily required PRS term (see Penal
Law § 70.45 [1]); it had not been made a part of the plea and was
not pronounced at the 2001 sentencing proceeding.  In 2008, some
three years after Acevedo had completed the sentence imposed in
the 2001 judgment, but while he was still serving his sentence
under the 2006 judgment, he moved pursuant to CPL 440.20 to be
resentenced on his 2001 conviction.  The motion was granted on
the People's consent in December 2008, and defendant was
resentenced, with the People's consent pursuant Penal Law §
70.85,* to the identical term of imprisonment nunc pro tunc to
*Penal Law § 70.85 provides in relevant part that, with the
People's consent, the Court may at a resentence to cure the
omission of mandatory PRS from a sentence "re-impose the
originally imposed determinate sentence of imprisonment without
any term of post-release supervision, which then shall be deemed
a lawful sentence."
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No. 129 & 130
July 19, 2001.  
Less than three weeks after the resentence, in early
January 2009, Acevedo moved, again pursuant to CPL 440.20, to
vacate his predicate violent felony offender adjudication in the
2006 case.  He argued that because his resentence on the 2001
conviction occurred in 2008, it postdated the offense for which
he was sentenced in 2006 and, accordingly, that the underlying
conviction no longer qualified as a predicate for enhanced
sentencing in connection with his 2006 conviction.  A predicate
sentence, he noted, "must have been imposed before the commission
of the present felony" (Penal Law § 70.06 [1] [b] [ii]).  
The motion court, citing People v Sparber (10 NY3d 457,
472 [2008]), denied vacatur of the 2006 predicate adjudication
upon the ground that the defect in the 2001 sentence arose from a
mere "procedural error" that did not vitiate the 2001 judgment's
validity as a prior felony conviction.  
The Appellate Division, with one Justice dissenting,
reversed (75 AD3d 255 [2010]).  It reasoned that, logically, a
resentence entails vacatur of the original sentence and that we
had, in fact, held in Sparber that the "sole remedy for a
procedural error such as this [the failure of the sentencing
court to pronounce a PRS term at sentencing] is to vacate the
sentence and remit for a resentencing hearing so that the trial
judge can make the required pronouncement" (75 AD3d at 259
[citing Sparber, 10 NY3d at 471 [emphasis added]).  Nor was the
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No. 129 & 130
Court of the view that the omission to be cured by the procedure
described in Sparber was a mere formality inconsequential beyond
the limited purpose of curing the trial court's failure to
pronounce the required PRS component of a determinate sentence. 
Here, the Court noted our language in Sparber and Matter of
Garner v New York State Dept. of Correctional Servs. (10 NY3d 358
[2008]) in which we stressed that resentencing to pronounce a
mandatory PRS term had a substantial effect on a defendant and
that the procedure implicated the public interest in ensuring the
regularity of sentencing (see Sparber 10 NY3d at 470; Garner, 10
NY3d at 363).  Inasmuch, then, as the Court understood Acevedo's
2001 sentence to have been vacated as a necessary antecedent to
his resentencing, it concluded that his operative sentence for
the 2001 attempted robbery was the one imposed at the 2008
resentencing -- one which plainly did not qualify as a predicate
for enhanced sentencing with respect to the crime for which
defendant was convicted in 2006.
People v Collado
The enhanced sentence challenged by Mr. Collado was
imposed in September 2005; Collado, after being convicted of two
counts of second degree robbery based upon an incident that took
place in December 2004, was then adjudged a second violent felony
offender and sentenced to concurrent eight-year terms.  The
predicate offense for the second violent felony offender
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No. 129 & 130
adjudication was a second degree attempted robbery conviction
obtained against Collado in June 2000, for which he was, at that
time, sentenced to a determinate term of two years.  PRS,
although statutorily mandated as a component of both the 2005 and
2000 sentences, was not pronounced by either sentencing court. 
At the conclusion of the appellate process stemming from the 2005
judgment of conviction, this Court deemed Collado's still
undischarged 2005 sentence illegal by reason of the sentencing
court's failure orally to pronounce the PRS portion of Collado's
determinate sentence (11 NY3d 888, 889 [2008]), and, in
accordance with Sparber (10 NY3d at 469-471), we remitted the
matter for resentencing (11 NY3d at 889).  
In January 2009, before the Sparber proceeding with
respect to the 2005 conviction, Collado moved pursuant to CPL
440.20 to be resentenced upon his 2000 conviction (the predicate
for his 2005 second violent felony offender adjudication) upon
the ground that the sentence imposed thereon suffered from the
same defect as the 2005 sentence.  At the ensuing Sparber
proceeding, in March 2009, the court addressed both sentences. 
With respect to the 2000 conviction, it resentenced Collado to
his originally imposed prison term but added thereto a PRS term
of 1 1/2 years.  The resentence, however, was imposed nunc pro
tunc to the original sentence date of June 29, 2000 and was, as
the court put it, "done the second the words are out of my
mouth."  As to the 2005 conviction, the court resentenced
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No. 129 & 130
defendant to the originally imposed eight-year aggregate prison
term and, in addition, pronounced as part of the sentence a five-
year PRS term.  The Court rejected Collado's contention that his
2009 resentence on the 2000 conviction operated to vitiate that
conviction's utility as a predicate for enhanced sentencing on
the 2005 conviction.  
The Appellate Division, for the reasons stated in its
decision in Acevedo, held that Collado could not be sentenced as
a predicate felon on the 2005 conviction based on a predicate
conviction for which sentence was, by reason of the 2009
resentence, subsequently imposed.  It, accordingly, reversed,
again over the dissent of a single Justice, vacated the judgment
of resentence in connection with the 2005 conviction and remanded
the matter for resentencing.
Both of the above-described Appellate Division orders
are now before us pursuant to leave granted by a Justice of that
Court.
The decisive feature of these cases is, we believe,
that the sentencing errors defendants sought to correct by
resentencing were errors in their favor: PRS was illegally
omitted from their original sentences.  The only practical
benefit defendants could possibly gain from the resentencings was
to move their sentences to a later date, thus eliminating their
prior crimes as predicates in their later cases.  We would hold
that this tactic was ineffective: in circumstances like these,
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No. 129 & 130
the original sentencing date should be the one to be considered
for predicate-felony purposes.  
By the time of their resentence motions, Acevedo and
Collado had fully served the sentences originally imposed upon
the convictions later used as predicates for sentence
enhancement.  Assuming, without deciding, that their resentences
were not nullities under our subsequent decision in People v
Williams (14 NY3d 198 [2010], cert denied sub nom New York v
Williams, __ US __, 131 S Ct 125 [2010]; but see 14 NY3d at 217)
and that they were not for that reason ineffective to alter the
relevant sentencing sequences, it remains that resentencing is
not in our view permissibly employed simply to leapfrog a
sentence forward so as to vitiate its utility as a sentencing
predicate.
It is true, of course, that we held in Sparber that the
sole appellate remedy for the failure of the trial court to
pronounce the PRS component of a determinate sentence is to remit
for vacatur of the original sentence followed by a resentence 
curing the omission (10 NY3d at 469-471).  Sparber resentencing,
however, was not the remedy sought by the Sparber appellants --
whose object was not a proceeding to cure the omission of
mandatory PRS from their original sentences, but the simple
expungement of the PRS terms to which they had been subject (id.)
-- and, it is fair to say that Sparber resentencing is not from
the perspective of most defendants remedial.  Ordinarily,
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No. 129 & 130
defendants do not move for the addition of PRS to their
sentences.  Sparber resentencing is rather a remedy most
frequently sought by the Department of Correctional Services
pursuant to Correction Law § 601-d to assure that a sentence in
connection with which PRS is required will in fact legally impose
that prescribed element of punishment.
In moving to be relieved of their original sentences
and thereafter resentenced in connection with their prior felony
convictions, defendants manifestly had no expectation that they
would obtain "relief" from those originally imposed, fully
discharged sentences.  It is instead transparent, if only from
the timing of their CPL 440.20 motions, that defendants' purpose
was, by means of vacatur and resentence, to render their prior
convictions useless as predicates to enhance punishment for the
crimes they subsequently committed.  Resentence is not a device
appropriately employed simply to alter a sentencing date and
thereby affect the utility of a conviction as a predicate for the
imposition of enhanced punishment.     
The present scenarios afford no occasion to decide what
effect a bona fide Sparber resentence, or any resentence other
than the ones before us, should have for predicate-felony
purposes.  All that we would decide is that the Sparber relief
these defendants obtained was not effective to avoid the penal
consequences of reoffending.
Accordingly, in each case, the order of the Appellate
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No. 129 & 130
Division should be reversed and the order of Supreme Court
reinstated. 
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People v Benito Acevedo
People v Dionis Collado
No. 129 & 130
PIGOTT, J.:
I agree with Chief Judge Lippman's opinion that
defendants are not entitled to have their sentences set aside;
but I reach this conclusion for different reasons. 
Under New York's Penal Law, a court may sentence a
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No. 129 & 130
defendant as a second felony offender only if certain statutory
conditions are met.  One of those conditions is the obvious one,
that the sentence for the prior conviction must have been imposed
before commission of the present felony (see Penal Law § 70.04
[1] [b] [ii]; § 70.06 [1] [b] [ii]).  
People v Bell (73 NY2d 153 [1989]) is the seminal case
addressing this rule.  There, prior to pleading guilty to the
predicate felony, the defendant was first successful in
overturning two jury convictions.  Defendant argued that the
"sentence" for purposes of determining second felony offender
status was the original sentence on the first overturned
conviction, more than 10 years before the commission of his
current crimes.  This Court disagreed, holding that a "reversal"
under the Criminal Procedure Law "means the vacating of such
judgment" (CPL 470.10 [1]), which includes both the conviction
and the sentence (CPL 1.20 [15]).  Having successfully challenged
his prior convictions, defendant could not thereafter claim that
the date of the earliest reversed conviction controlled.
 Unlike the scenario in Bell, when a defendant is
resentenced based upon a Sparber error, the underlying conviction
remains as does that part of the sentence imposing incarceration,
because, under Sparber and its progeny, the purpose of the
resentence is simply to provide a process to correct a
"procedural error", "akin to a misstatement or clerical error"
(People v Sparber, 10 NY3d 457, 471 [2008]). 
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No. 129 & 130
Our recent holding in People v Lingle (2011 WL 1583943
[2011]) makes this clear.  We stated specifically that in
remitting those several cases to Supreme Court we did so "for
resentencing and the proper judicial pronouncement of the
relevant PRS terms" (id. citing Sparber, 10 NY3d at 465).  We
distinguished the decretal paragraph we used in Sparber, which
directed that "the order of the Appellate Division should be
modified by remitting to Supreme Court for a resentencing hearing
that will include the proper pronouncement of the relevant PRS
term", from the remittal language we have used in other
resentencing cases, noting, for example, that in a case where the
court erred in ruling that a defendant was a predicate felon, we
remitted for the court to vacate the original sentence and to
resentence the defendant.
The resentencing hearings that took place in these
Sparber appeals were limited to remedying the specific procedural
error of the sentencing judge; i.e., to make the required PRS
pronouncement (Lingle, 2011 WL 1583943 ["Put another way,
resentencing to set right the flawed imposition of PRS at the
original sentencing is not a plenary proceeding"]).  The
convictions were undisturbed because the resentencing courts
lacked the power to reconsider either the conviction or the
incarceration component of the original sentence.  As a result,
the original sentence date remained.  For these reasons, I would
hold that when determining whether a defendant is a prior felony
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No. 129 & 130
offender for purposes of sentencing under the Penal Law, the
original sentence date on the prior conviction, and not the
Sparber resentencing date, controls.   
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People v Benito Acevedo & People v Dionis Collado 
No. 129 & 130 
 
JONES, J. (dissenting):
Defendants seek to vacate their predicate felony
adjudications on the ground that they are not second felony
offenders.  Their predicate felony sentences were vacated and
they were resentenced under People v Sparber (10 NY3d 457
[2008]).  The resentencing in each case took place after the
commission of the second felony.  Criminal Procedure Law § 70.06
makes absolutely clear that: "For the purpose of determining
whether a prior conviction is a predicate felony conviction . . .
[the s]entence upon such prior conviction must have been imposed
before commission of the present felony."  Because this criterion
is absent from these cases, I respectfully dissent.    
This Court fashioned the following remedy for
procedurally flawed impositions of PRS terms: "vacate the
sentence and remit for a resentencing hearing so that the trial
judge can make the required pronouncement" (Sparber, 10 NY3d at
471).  Because vacating a sentence has the legal effect of
rendering it a nullity, there is no doubt that the Sparber
resentences have -- for better or worse -- affected defendants'
predicate felony status.
Here, the failure to pronounce defendants' mandatory
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No. 91
PRS terms at the predicate sentencing created the circumstance
which mandated that defendants be resentenced.  Because their
resentencing under Sparber took place after the subsequent felony
conviction, defendants' proper sentences were not imposed until
after the commission of the present felony; as such, defendants
can no longer be classified as second felony offenders (see
People v Robles, 251 AD2d 20 [1st Dept 1998]).  Accordingly, I
would vote to affirm the Appellate Division orders.  
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
In Each Case:  Order reversed and order of Supreme Court, New
York County, reinstated.  Opinion by Chief Judge Lippman.  Judges
Ciparick and Smith concur.  Judge Pigott concurs in result in an
opinion in which Judges Graffeo and Read concur.  Judge Jones
dissents and votes to affirm in an opinion.
Decided June 30, 2011
     
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