Title: The People v. Lamont Beasley

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. 53  
The People &c.,
            Respondent,
        v.
Lamont Beasley,
            Appellant.
Jeremy L. Gutman, for appellant.
Ann Bordley, for respondent.
CIPARICK, J.:
On May 5, 2005, Defendant Lamont Beasley was arraigned
on a felony complaint charging him with criminal possession of a
controlled substance in the second degree and lesser offenses. 
The matter was presented to a grand jury and, on May 27, 2005, an
indictment was filed and the People announced their readiness for
trial.  On June 15, 2005, defendant was arraigned on the
indictment and Supreme Court adjourned the matter to August 17,
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No. 53
2005, ordering open file discovery and production of the grand
jury minutes for inspection pursuant to defendant's motion to
dismiss the indictment.  On August 17, 2005, the People failed to
produce the Grand Jury minutes and informed the court that they
would produce the minutes "off calendar."  Supreme Court
adjourned the proceedings to September 28, 2005.  The People
provided the grand jury minutes to chambers on August 30, 2005. 
Supreme Court decided the motion on September 28, 2005.
Subsequent adjournments ensued not relevant to this
appeal and, on September 12, 2006, defendant moved pursuant to
CPL  30.30 (1) (a) to dismiss the charges on the basis that the
People had exceeded the statutory limit of six months (in this
case, 184 days) in bringing the matter to trial.  The affirmation
filed in support of the motion argued inter alia that, "[o]n
August 17, 2005, the People represented the grand jury minutes
will be provided off calendar and the matter was adjourned to
September 28, 2005.  The period of August 17, 2005 to September
28, 2005, a total of 42 days are chargeable to the People."  The
People in response argued that, pursuant to CPL 30.30 (4) (a),
the 42 day period between August 17, 2005 and September 28, 2005,
during which the decision on the sufficiency of the grand jury
minutes was still pending, was excludable.  Defendant did not
file a reply, nor was there oral argument on the motion.  
Defendant never argued that the 42 day period should be
broken down into smaller periods reflecting the pre and post
production of the Grand Jury minutes.  In fact, defendant made no
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No. 53
argument at all refuting the People's contention that the entire
period was excludable.  Supreme Court denied the motion, charging
the people with 173 days of delay and the matter proceeded to
trial.  Defendant was convicted of Criminal Possession of a
Controlled Substance in the Second Degree and sentenced as a
second felony drug offender to 12 years in prison and five years
of post-release supervision.  
A divided Appellate Division affirmed the judgment of
conviction, finding that the entire 42-day period between April
17, 2005 and September 28, 2005 was excludable (People v Beasley,
69 AD3d 741 [2d Dept 2010]).  The dissenting Justices concluded
that the 13 day period from August 17, 2005, the date set for
open file discovery and production of the grand jury minutes, to
August 30, 2005, the date the minutes were actually produced,
should be chargeable to the People.  The dissent noted that
failure to provide grand jury minutes "[is] a direct and
virtually insurmountable, impediment to the trial's very
commencement" (Beasley at 69 AD3d at 747, quoting People v
McKenna, 76 NY2d 59, 64 [1990]).  Thus the dissenting Justices
would have added 13 days to the 173 found by Supreme Court for a
total of 186 days, a clear speedy trial violation mandating
dismissal of the indictment.  A Justice of the Appellate Division
granted defendant leave to appeal and we now affirm, on different
grounds.  
On this appeal, defendant argues, for the very first
time, that the People should be charged with the discrete 13 day
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No. 53
period between August 17th and August 30th.  This argument was
not properly preserved at Supreme Court and therefore we cannot
review it (see CPL 470.05 [2]). 
The procedure for preserving an argument in a CPL 30.30
motion is well established.
"A defendant seeking a speedy trial dismissal
pursuant to CPL 30.30 meets his or her
initial burden on the motion simply by
alleging only that the prosecution failed to
declare readiness within the statutorily
prescribed time period.  However, once the
People identify the statutory exclusions on
which they intend to rely, the defendant
preserves the challenges to the People's
reliance on those exclusions for appellate
review by identifying any legal or factual
impediments to the use of those exclusions"  
(People v Goode, 87 NY2d 1045, 1047 [1996]
[internal citations, quotations and brackets
omitted]. 
 
Here, defendant met his initial burden.  However, once
the People set forth the statutory exclusions on which they
intended to rely, defendant failed to identify the specific legal
and factual impediments to those exclusions, specifically the
argument that the People should be charged with the 13 days
between August 17th and August 30th for failing to timely provide
the Grand Jury minutes.  Because defendant failed to raise this
argument before the Supreme Court, he has preserved no question
of law for our review (see People v Luperon, 85 NY2d 71, 77
[1995]).
Defendant argues that all the information the trial
court required was contained in the People's affirmation, which
stated that the grand jury minutes were not produced until August
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No. 53
30, 2005, and therefore, the trial court had all the information
it needed to "remedy the problem and thereby avert reversible
error" (id. at 78).  This argument is unavailing.  Nothing in the
People's affirmation would have alerted the trial court that
defendant was claiming that the People should be charged with 13
days of post-readiness delay due to the untimely production of
the Grand Jury minutes.  It was defendant's duty, either in its
initial submission or in a reply, to draw the court's attention
to the discrete periods that he now claims should have been
chargeable to the people pursuant to CPL 30.30 and to explain
why.  Not only did defendant fail to highlight the 13 day period,
he failed to offer any legal basis for his claim that the entire
42 day period was chargeable as post-readiness delay, or rebut in
any way the People's contention that the 42 day period fell
within one of the exemptions. 
Defense counsel's obligation to point out the legal or
factual impediments to the People's arguments is a rule to be
"adher[ed] to strict[ly]" (Goode, 87 NY2d at 1047).  That the
trial court has all the factual information before it is
immaterial.  "[I]t is defense counsel who is charged with the
single-minded, zealous representation of the client and thus, of
all the trial participants, it is defense counsel who best knows
the argument to be advanced on the client's behalf" (People v
Hawkins, 11 NY3d 484, 492 [2008] [reviewing claim of legal
insufficiency]).  Defendant's failure to preserve his legal
argument in Supreme Court precludes any further discussion or
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No. 53
consideration of the merits of his claims.
Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should
be affirmed. 
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People v Lamont Beasley
No. 53
SMITH, J. (concurring):
I think the preservation here was adequate.  Defendant
argued that 42 days of time were chargeable to the People because
of their failure to furnish the grand jury minutes promptly; that
should be read as encompassing an argument that the first 17 days
of that time were so chargeable for the exact same reason.  It is
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No. 53
not fair or realistic to insist that a defense lawyer follow
arguments of this kind with a diminuendo sequence ("all three
weeks are chargeable to the People, but if not the first two
weeks are, and if not that the first week, and if not that the
first three days . . . .").  This affirmance on preservation
grounds will only encourage prosecutors in their already well-
established tendency to pounce on every arguable imperfection in
a defense lawyer's argument as a barrier to deciding a case on
the merits.
I would reach the merits and would affirm the Appellate
Division's order, essentially for the reasons stated by the
Appellate Division majority. 
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Order affirmed. Opinion by Judge Ciparick. Chief Judge Lippman
and Judges Graffeo, Read, Pigott and Jones concur. Judge Smith
concurs in result in an opinion.
Decided March 24, 2011
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