Opinion ID: 2046959
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Statistical Increase in Depraved Indifference Murder Charges

Text: After having been limited, for decades, to the most horrendous killings, depraved indifference murder counts have become routine escorts to intentional murder counts. While observers have sensed it and criminal lawyers on both sides of the fence would no doubt attest to it anecdotally, the statistics indisputably confirm it. According to the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), [13] in 1989 only 19% of all Penal Law § 125.25 indictments contained a count of depraved indifference murder. By 2001, prosecutors charged depraved indifference murder in 70% of all murder indictments. During that same period, while the number of murder indictments fell by 50% from 1315 to 666 per year, the number of depraved indifference murder charges nearly doubled from 246 to 468 annually ( see Division of Criminal Justice Services, Indictment Statistical System, New York State Indictments Containing at Least One Penal Law Section 125.25 Charge [Feb. 2002] [reproduced in Appendix, infra ]). In addition to the seismic increase (in raw numbers) in depraved indifference murder prosecutions, DCJS has documented a burgeoning frequency of coupling depraved indifference murder counts with intentional murder counts. Between 1989 and 1992, prosecutors charged both counts for the same homicide an average of 221 times per year. Since 1993, prosecutors charged both counts an average of 373 times, a 69% increase. Even more striking, as a percentage of all murder indictments, these twin-count indictments have steadily increased from 14% in 1989 to nearly 56% in 2001a fourfold increase in 13 years. Today, a majority of all murder indictments in New York charge both intentional murder and depraved indifference murder. This is extraordinary. Moreover, the rate of such twin-count indictments has steadily risen at an average rate of 4.3% each year for the last 13 years ( see id. ). There is no reason to doubt the continued expansion of this now routine practicehaving reached the point in which virtually every intentional murder is defined (inaptly, I submit) as an act of depraved indifference. The prediction that we would see a wholesale increase in the number of depraved indifference murder countsa warning dismissed by the Court in Register (and again in Roe )has come true. [14] The majority's only response to this startling statistical phenomenon is to suggest that the number of convictions for depraved indifference murder has not risen as exponentially as the number of indictments ( see majority op at 385 n 5). Even so, the charge of depraved indifference murder, intended to be a rare indictment for a rare breed of criminal, has undeniably become a tactical weapon of choice that distorts the Penal Law and skews the process of indictment, trial and pleajust as the dissenters in Register and Roe rightly predicted.