Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2012/61.html
Timestamp: 2020-02-22 17:30:36
Document Index: 456170383

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 431', '§ 110', '§ 160', '§ 155', '§ 15', '§ 15']

People v Pagan :: 2012 :: New York Court of Appeals Decisions :: New York Case Law :: New York Law :: US Law :: Justia
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Defendant was convicted of criminal charges related to an underlying dispute regarding cab fare. On appeal, the court addressed the relation between a claim of right defense and a mistake of fact defense in the second-degree robbery context. The court concluded that, in the circumstances of this case, the two defenses were equivalent. The jury heard evidence that defendant had negotiated a $4 cab fare even though she carried $21; tried to pay the cabdriver the agreed fare from money he had given her as change, after retrieving from him the money she had paid him; scratched and bit the cabdriver in an effort to take money from him; and produced a knife while continuing to demand money. Considering the facts in the light most favorable to the People, the jury could have rationally concluded that defendant had no good faith belief that the bills she tried to take were hers, but was instead trying to take money she knew was another's. Accordingly, the court affirmed the conviction.
People v Pagan 2012 NY Slip Op 02418 Decided on April 3, 2012 Court of Appeals Pigott, J. Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.
Sara M. Zausmer, for respondent.
In this appeal, we address the relation between a claim of right defense and a mistake of fact defense in the second-degree robbery context. We conclude that, in the [*2]circumstances of this case, the two defenses are equivalent. I.
Defendant was arrested and subsequently indicted on charges of attempted robbery in the first degree, attempted robbery in the second degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, assault in the third degree, and menacing in the second degree. She [*3]proceeded to a jury trial in Supreme Court. II.
In summation, defense counsel argued that defendant had been confused and thought the money she was trying to take was her own. The prosecutor emphasized that defendant had no right to resort to physical force to take money, regardless of whether she believed the money was hers.
Ultimately, Supreme Court gave the negative claim of right instruction, telling the jury that "the law does not permit one person to use force to take money from another person, even where the person doing the taking honestly believes he or she is entitled to take money." Supreme Court did not give the mistake of fact instruction requested by the defense.
The jury found defendant guilty of all the charges except attempted robbery in the first degree, which count was dismissed on the People's motion. Supreme Court denied defendant's motion to dismiss, and defendant was duly convicted of the remaining charges, including attempted robbery in the second degree (Penal Law §§ 110, 160.10 [2] [a]).
On appeal, defendant argued that Supreme Court committed reversible error by refusing her requested mistake of fact charge and that the evidence was legally insufficient. The Appellate Division affirmed the judgment of conviction (81 AD3d 86 [1st Dept 2010]). A Judge of this Court granted defendant leave to appeal. We now affirm. III.
Robbery is defined as "forcible stealing" (Penal Law § 160.00); larceny is an element of robbery. Although it is a defense to larceny "that the property was appropriated[*4]under a claim of right made in good faith" (Penal Law § 155.15 [1]), our case law has limited the application of that defense to robbery. Forcibly taking the property of another, even when one honestly believes it to be one's own property "entails the risk of physical or mental injury to individuals" (People v Reid, 69 NY2d 469, 476-477 [1987]). Thus, we have held that the claim of right defense may not be raised in a robbery case when a defendant takes money to satisfy a preexisting debt (id.). Moreover, we have held that, even when a claim of right defense is permitted, a jury instruction outlining the claim may not be given in a robbery case, "regardless of the nature of the property taken" (People v Green, 5 NY3d 536, 545 [2005]).
For these reasons, a jury instruction concerning a claim of right defense would not have been permissible in the present case. Defendant insists, however, that the jury instruction she sought related not to a claim of right, but to the defense of mistake of fact. Under that defense, a person is relieved of criminal liability for conduct that she engages in "under a mistaken belief of fact" if "[s]uch factual mistake negatives the culpable mental state required for the commission of an offense" (Penal Law § 15.20 [1] [a]).
Defendant's argument misapprehends the relation between the claim of right defense and the mistake of fact defense. Depending on the underlying facts, the two defenses may overlap, such that the defenses are identical with one other. In so far as defendant's claim of right defense involves the claim that defendant had a mistaken belief that the property he took was his own, it is also a mistake of fact defense, because it amounts to the claim that defendant's "factual mistake negatives the culpable mental state required for the commission of [the] offense" (Penal Law § 15.20 [1] [a]), namely larcenous intent. In this factual scenario, the claim of right defense is a specific instance of the more general category of mistake of fact.
A mistake of fact defense, claiming that defendant erroneously but honestly believed that the property she tried to take was hers, is therefore governed by the same case law that restricts a claim of right defense. That mistake of fact defense, like the identical claim of right defense, will not apply when the crime involves taking money by force to satisfy a preexisting debt (see Reid, 69 NY2d at 476-477), and no jury instruction concerning that mistake of fact defense is permissible in a robbery case, "regardless of the nature of the property taken" (People v Green, 5 NY3d 536, 545 [2005]). It follows that, under Green, defendant was not entitled to the jury instruction that she requested on her mistake of fact defense. IV.
We now turn to the question whether the People were entitled to a negative claim of right charge.
Part of our rationale for disallowing a claim of right defense when a defendant takes money to satisfy a preexisting debt has been that a person cannot have a true claim to bills or other currency, because they are fungible (see Reid, 69 NY2d at 476). Generally, the law [*5]considers a defendant who believes that he is owed a sum of money, and then takes cash in that amount by force, to have committed robbery. On the other hand, a good-faith belief that a chattel belongs to the taker would, if credited by the jury, negate the larcenous intent element of robbery (Green, 5 NY3d at 544).
The difference lies in whether defendant may have had a good faith belief that the particular property belonged to him. When a defendant takes a hundred dollars from a debtor by force, without any evidence to suggest that defendant cares about the particular bills making up that hundred dollars, defendant cannot be said to have a good faith belief that the bills are his own. On the other hand, when a defendant takes a painting, or a car, or a television set, he may have an honest belief that it is his own property he is retrieving.
Currency might be, in essence, chattel if its intrinsic qualities, as opposed to its monetary value, are significant to the defendant, for example if defendant takes what he mistakenly believes to be a Roman coin from his collection or what he incorrectly thinks is a bill he marked with a handwritten poem. One can also conceive of a situation in which cash acquires a chattel-like status, through the circumstances of the taking. A person who sees a burglar emerge from her home carrying what she believes to be bundles of cash she had left under her bed has a claim of right defense if she takes the cash back by force and it turns out that it was not hers.
Here, defendant's mistake of fact or claim of right defense, to prevail, must rest on the theory that the $16 she attempted to take were, in essence, chattels, not fungible cash. But there was no evidence that the particular bills making up the $16 had any significance for defendant, or that she could identify them as hers. Those bills were change that the cabdriver produced after defendant gave him $20. Therefore, Supreme Court's negative claim of right instruction was proper. Consequently, we find that the jury charge contained no error. V.
Defendant's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence rests on the argument that the People failed to disprove her mistake of fact defense. As we have noted, that defense, in this factual setting, amounts to a claim of right defense. It is an ordinary, not an affirmative, defense (People v Chesler, 50 NY2d 203, 209-210 [1980]), and the burden of disproving it, when raised, is on the People.
Here, the jury heard evidence that defendant had negotiated a $4 fare even though she carried $21; tried to pay the cabdriver the agreed fare from money he had given her as change, after retrieving from him the money she had paid him; scratched and bit the cabdriver in an effort to take money from him; and produced a knife while continuing to demand money. Considering the facts in the light most favorable to the People, as we must on a legal sufficiency challenge, the jury could have rationally concluded that defendant had no good faith belief that the bills she tried to take were hers, but was instead trying to take money she knew was another's. [*6]The People met their burden of disproving the defense.
Order affirmed. Opinion by Judge Pigott. Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo, Read, Smith and Jones concur.