Court Opinion

ID: 9782735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:09:05.282927+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:09.115473
License: Public Domain

Jones, J. (dissenting).
On this record, I believe that defendant received ineffective assistance of counsel. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
Defendant was convicted in 2005 of manslaughter in connection with a homicide which occurred in 1993. At the same trial, he was acquitted of murder. There is no dispute that the manslaughter charge was time-barred. The sole issue is whether the failure to object to the charge was a deliberate trial strategy or amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel.
Following his conviction, defendant filed a pro se motion pursuant to CPL 440.10. He contended that he had received ineffective assistance of counsel because counsel failed to object on the ground that the five-year statute of limitations relating to the manslaughter charge had expired (see CPL 30.10 [2] [b]). Supreme Court denied defendant’s motion. The court accepted the People’s contention that defendant could raise the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel on direct appeal. A Justice of the Appellate Division denied defendant’s application for leave to appeal from the denial of the motion.
*577On direct appeal, the Appellate Division affirmed the judgment of conviction. Although trial counsel submitted affirmations acknowledging ignorance of the statute of limitations defense, the court held that they were matters outside the record, which could not be reviewed. On the record, however, the court held, among other things, that defense counsel provided effective assistance. It concluded that “[c]ounsel’s failure to raise the statute of limitations as a defense to the first-degree manslaughter count reflect[ed] a legitimate trial strategy of a reasonably competent attorney” (69 AD3d 649, 650 [2010]). This conclusion was speculative and unsupported by the record.
This record is sufficient to resolve defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim in his favor. As a threshold matter, I disagree with my colleagues regarding the relevancy of trial counsel’s affirmations (see majority op at 574). An affirmation by trial counsel regarding his internal deliberations on how to proceed is immaterial (see People v Satterfield, 66 NY2d 796, 799 [1985] [“counsel’s subjective reasons for (a decision are) immaterial”]). It is how trial counsel proceeded on the record which is of importance in this matter. It is clear on this record that neither the court nor the parties recognized that the manslaughter charge was time-barred (cf. People v Mills, 1 NY3d 269 [2003]). Moreover, acknowledging that the manslaughter charge was time-barred on the record would not have removed the charge from consideration. Contrarily, it would have been objective proof of defense counsel’s trial strategy to have the time-barred manslaughter charge considered by the trial court; in addition, it might have constituted a waiver of the defense (see id.). In Mills, the defendant had been charged with second-degree murder, but in a pretrial motion and a subsequent charge conference, he affirmatively requested that lesser included offenses be submitted to the jury (id. at 272). The trial court considered the request, conditioned upon “defendant’s ‘understanding that, if convicted of any lesser included offense, he has waived his objection on statute of limitation[s] grounds’ ” (id.). Unlike Mills, where there was an objective basis in the record to conclude that the affirmative request for the lesser included charges was a form of trial strategy, this record fails to demonstrate such a deliberate choice by defense counsel. Because the record clearly demonstrates that defendant should not have been charged with manslaughter, as its statute of limitations had run and no tolling provisions applied, and neither party nor *578the court recognized that the charge was time-barred, defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim can be resolved on the existing record alone (see People v Benevento, 91 NY2d 708 [1998]), and, for the foregoing reasons, should be resolved in defendant’s favor.
Effective assistance of counsel is a right guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, § 6 of the State Constitution (see People v Baldi, 54 NY2d 137, 146 [1981]). It is a right that exists “to protect the fundamental right to a fair trial” (Strickland v Washington, 466 US 668, 684 [1984]). A defendant’s “constitutional rights are violated if a defendant’s counsel fails to meet a minimum standard of effectiveness, and defendant suffers prejudice from that failure” (People v Turner, 5 NY3d 476, 479 [2005]).
In rare cases, “a single failing in an otherwise competent performance is so ‘egregious and prejudicial’ as to deprive a defendant of his constitutional right” that it can bring about ineffective assistance of counsel (id. at 480). It is most obvious when counsel “fail[ed] to raise a defense as clear-cut and completely dispositive as a statute of limitations. Such a failure, in the absence of a reasonable explanation for it, is hard to reconcile with a defendant’s constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel” (id. at 481).
Similar to the case at bar, in Turner, the defendant was indicted for murder in the second degree. At trial, the prosecutor asked that the jury be instructed to consider the lesser included offense, manslaughter in the first degree, which was time-barred. Defense counsel objected, but failed to specifically invoke the statute of limitations. The defendant was acquitted of second-degree murder, but convicted of first-degree manslaughter. After his conviction, the defendant unsuccessfully tried to raise the statute of limitations issue through his appellate counsel. Appellate counsel failed to argue that issue on direct appeal, and his conviction was affirmed.
This Court subsequently considered the issue on defendant’s second petition for a writ of error coram nobis. Although the ultimate issue in Turner involved ineffective assistance of appellate counsel, the question “depended] on how strong defendant’s statute of limitations defense was” (5 NY3d at 481). The Turner Court concluded that the statute of limitations defense “was a winning argument [and] that trial counsel could not reasonably have thought that the defense was not worth raising” (id.).
*579In the Turner case, because trial counsel objected to the manslaughter charge without arguing that the charge was time-barred, no reasonable explanation existed for failing to raise that specific defense. The record in Turner, as in the instant case, did not support the conclusion that counsel had waived the defense. Though the circumstances of ineffective assistance of counsel in Turner differ from that of this case, the principle remains the same. Defendants were convicted of manslaughter despite the existence of the clear-cut and dispositive defense of the statute of limitations to those charges. Such a failure to raise the defense is clearly prejudicial to a defendant who is acquitted of all other charges save for the time-barred charge. Particularly given that counsel could have advised the court on the record that the manslaughter charge, although time-barred, still could be considered. Thus, I submit, where it is clear, as it is on this record, that no consideration regarding the expiration of the time to prosecute had been given, it should not be presumed that defense counsel’s failure to raise the defense was a legitimate strategy.
Furthermore, the majority urges that when future, similar cases are presented, the Appellate Division should consolidate a defendant’s CPL 440.10 motion with his or her direct appeal in order to allow review of matters de hors the record. However, this does not solve the predicament that the instant defendant finds himself in. Defendant has had two CPL 440.10 motions claiming ineffective assistance of counsel denied and as a result of the majority’s opinion, his direct appeal has now been exhausted. While the majority’s suggestion seeks to remedy this procedural dilemma, for this defendant, this holding effectively forecloses him from a legitimate avenue and basis for future CPL 440.10 motions because the majority has definitively held that defense counsel’s failure to object to the manslaughter charge was a reasonable trial strategy despite the lack of record support for such a conclusion. The conclusion that defense counsel’s reference to the manslaughter charge in his summation was trial strategy, without further evidence that counsel or the trial court was aware of this statute of limitations issue, is unfounded speculation.
In sum, defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim rests on a single issue, which is indisputable. The People charged defendant with manslaughter after the expiration of the five-year statute of limitations, and trial counsel failed to raise the statute of limitations as a defense. Moreover, at no point during *580the bench trial was there any discussion on the record regarding the statute of limitations of the manslaughter charge. Thus, without discussing on the record that the statute of limitations had run, contrary to the majority’s conclusions, trial counsel’s references to the manslaughter charge cannot be said to be a trial strategy. Given that such a defense may be forfeited or waived (Mills, 1 NY3d at 274 [“New York courts have long recognized that the statute of limitations defense . . . can be forfeited or waived by a defendant”]), there is nothing in this record to suggest that trial counsel consented to having the manslaughter charge considered even though the time to prosecute that crime had run. Therefore, in light of the prejudice to defendant, trial counsel’s failure to raise the statute of limitations defense, on this record, constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel.
Accordingly, I would reverse the Appellate Division order and vacate the judgment of conviction.
Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo, Read and Smith concur with Judge Pigott; Judge Jones dissents and votes to reverse in a separate opinion.
Order affirmed.