Source: https://nycriminallaw.wordpress.com/category/commentaries/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 23:53:06+00:00

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Appellate litigation is not without costs. The indigent defendant is entitled to a court-appointed lawyer, the People must assign an assistant to write and argue a brief, and the intermediate appellate court must take the time to hear and decide the case. Doing all of this in the context of where the parties have come together to reach an agreement is a waste of resources for all sides and the court.
Thus, it is immaterial whether such waivers are asked for “across-the-board”; an individual defendant is always free to reject it.
Earlier today, Paul Tsenesidis posted about People v. Tiger, where the Court of Appeals held that a freestanding actual innocence claim without any further constitutional basis, such as IAC or Brady, could not be used to vacate a judgment that was obtained by guilty plea.
It’s not that the statute in question (CPL 440.10) actually says that. Or that the statute cannot be interpreted to allow an actual innocence challenge. No, the majority chose to adopt that interpretation. … So why did the Court choose to reject the availability of an actual innocence challenge? Strangely–and this is cause for at least as much concern as the Court’s decision itself–the majority relied in large measure on Supreme Court precedents.
That said, Professor Bonventre’s point is that the statute does provide relief: CPL § 440.10(1)(h), which states that judgments obtained in violation of constitutional rights are subject to vacatur. The argument is that the state Constitution provides for such a basis. Thus, citation to federal cases is inapposite. The New York Court of Appeals has a long tradition of interpreting the New York Constitution as going further than its federal counterpart. Yet the majority does not engage with those cases or principles. (On the other hand, most of those cases are in the search/seizure and right to counsel areas, which do not have bearing on a procedural issue.) If I read Professor Bonventre’s post correctly, he is arguing that the state constitutional issue is properly before the Court—and needed to be addressed—via CPL § 440.10(1)(h).
Still, I come back to the plain language of the statute. CPL § 440.10(1)(h) permits vacatur if the judgment was obtained in violation of a defendant’s state or federal constitutional right. The key word in the statute is “obtained.” In an actual innocence case, the judgment was not “obtained” by some unconstitutional practice. It was obtained by the defendant’s consent to entry of judgment. After all, a person who maintains his or her innocence is allowed to enter into a contractual bargain with the State for a reduced sentence. See North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970). Again, to Professor Bonventre’s point, Alford is a federal case, but the principle in Alford has been upheld in New York courts as well. See, e.g., People v. Couser, 28 N.Y.3d 368 (2017). So in a roundabout way, perhaps the Tiger majority did engage state constitutional law in its analysis.
And maybe this is to say that there isn’t much daylight between Professor Bonventre’s position and mine after all.
Eric Lesh, the executive director of LeGaL, the LGBT Bar Association of New York, and James Castle, of Cozen O’Connor, have an article in today’s New York Law Journal calling on the Legislature to pass proposed legislation to outlaw the “gay and trans ‘panic defense,” which they summarize as, “a blame-shifting strategy upon which those accused of LGBT murder think they can rely in order to rally the anti-LGBT biases of judges and juries and mitigate their perceived culpability.” Essentially, the accused uses the sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim as a “reasonable explanation or excuse” to establish extreme emotional disturbance, dropping a Murder charge down to Manslaughter.

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