Opinion ID: 2041973
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Reversal

Text: We held in People v Glass (43 NY2d 283 [1977]), and hold again now, that the loss of minutes does not by itself require the reversal of a conviction. To overcome the presumption of regularity, a defendant must show not only that minutes are missing, but also that there were inadequate means from which it could be determined whether appealable and reviewable issues were present ( id. at 287). In Glass, we relied on People v Rivera (39 NY2d 519, 523 [1976]), where we said: [W]hile a defendant should have as fair an appeal as possible, and while, if the use of available minutes would aid in assuring it, he is entitled to have their assistance, unless they have become unavailable because of any active fault on the part of the People, it does not necessarily follow from the fact that their absence compels resort to a less perfect record, that the right to appeal must be deemed to be frustrated. For, in this imperfect world, the right of a defendant to a fair appeal, or for that matter a fair trial, does not necessarily guarantee him a perfect trial or a perfect appeal. Though we implied in Rivera (as we later held in Glass ) that the absence of minutes would not normally justify reversal, we held reversal to be proper in Rivera ; it is, so far, the only case in which we have held that the inadvertent loss of stenographic minutes caused the defendant such severe prejudice that reversal was warranted. There, the proceedings as to which no minutes could be found had occurred 20 years before, and virtually every possible source for reconstructing the events had vanished: the judge had died; the prosecutor's memory had been impaired by a stroke; Rivera's court appointed counsel, since disbarred, could not be located; and Rivera himself suffered from a complete retrograde amnesia of the trial (39 NY2d at 524). We held that [u]nder these unusual circumstances, the presumption of regularity which ordinarily attaches to judicial proceedings . . . does not avail the People . . . . ( Id. at 524-525.) Neither Parris nor Hofler can make a showing of prejudice remotely comparable to Rivera's. Parris argues that there is prejudice not because all possible sources of reconstruction have disappeared, but because the sources are too numerous. He suggests that voir dire would be nearly impossible to recreate. . . without the assistance of . . . the entire pool of prospective jurors. We disagree. A determination of whether any significant issues arose during the voir dire and were preserved for appellate review should be possible without any such massive inquiry. Parris argues that no hearing could recreate jury selection in all its details, but he has not shown that, if he had acted diligently, an adequate reconstruction of those proceedings could not have been achieved. We repeat our remark in Rivera that, where the absence of minutes results from inadvertence, resort to a less perfect record is not an infringement of a criminal defendant's rights. Both Parris and Hofler claim prejudice resulting from the fact that, in each case, the judge who presided at the untranscribed proceedings no longer sits in Supreme Court. Neither of them can show, however, that it would be impossible to obtain information about those proceedings from the judge, or that the proceedings could not be reconstructed with information from other sources. We therefore conclude that neither Parris nor Hofler is entitled to reversal of his conviction.