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

Heading: People v Register

Text: People v Register (60 NY2d 270) marked a turning point in the Court's analysis. There we addressed depraved indifference murder but dealt principally with the question whether the trial court erred in refusing to consider intoxication as a defense to depraved indifference murder. In affirming Register's depraved indifference murder conviction, the Court, for the first time, held that the requisite mens rea for that crime was ordinary recklessnessthe exact same mental state required for manslaughter in the second degree. [8] Moreover, the Court determined that the statutory phrase [u]nder circumstances evincing a depraved indifference referred not to the defendant's mental state but the objective circumstances surrounding the criminal act. In depraved indifference murder cases, the focus, stated the Court, is on the assessment of the degree of risk presented by defendant's reckless conduct ( id. at 277). The Court went on to hold that because intoxication evidence should be excluded whenever recklessness is an element of the crime, the trial court's refusal was proper. In dissent, Judge Jasen (joined by Chief Judge Cooke and Judge Meyer) arguedcompellingly to my mindthat the mens rea element of depraved indifference murder is depraved indifference and not, as the majority concluded, mere recklessness. The dissenters pointed out that ever since the crime of depraved indifference murder was codified under the Revised Statutes of 1829, the culpable mental state had been depravity a mental state far more egregious than ordinary recklessness ( see id. at 285-286). In the Register dissenters' view, there existed no reason to depart from a point of law that had been settled for 130 years, particularly where the Legislature, by its 1967 recodification, intended no such departure ( see id. at 281-282). Register dealt chiefly with the defense of intoxication, but ironically, the case has served as the fulcrum for what has become a steadily growing prosecutorial practice of charging defendants with depraved indifference murder as a companion count to intentional murder. The Register majority brushed aside the dissenters' prediction that the decision would result in wholesale depraved mind murder prosecutions for what are essentially intentional murders ( id. at 279). That prediction proved prescient, however, as revealed by the enormous growth in depraved indifference murder companion counts post- Register.