Court Opinion

ID: 9705069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:55:45.165812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:10.156448
License: Public Domain

Read, J. (dissenting).
At common law, a criminal defendant could only be tried in the county where a crime was actually committed. Over a century ago, however, the Legislature relaxed this standard statutorily so as to prevent “miscarriage of justice.” Almost 90 years later, a comprehensive new Criminal Procedure Law expanded upon the then existing remedial statute, with the CPL’s drafters noting that “[i]n general, . . . multiple county jurisdiction is bestowed more liberally than state jurisdiction” (Commn Staff Notes, reprinted following CPL 20.40 in NY CLS, Book 7, at 109 [emphasis added]). Yet today a majority of the Court concludes that there is no geographical jurisdiction over this criminal defendant in any New York county even though geographical jurisdiction was concededly proper in New York State. Neither the CPL’s text nor our past decisions mandate such an irrational result. I respectfully dissent.
Statutory Text and Legislative History
The specific question posed by this appeal is whether the evidence presented to the grand jury satisfies jurisdiction in New York County within the meaning of CPL 20.40 (2) (c). In order to answer this question, we must construe CPL 20.40 (2) (c), which grants so-called “particular effect” jurisdiction to New *431York counties. Because “[i]t is fundamental that a court, in interpreting a statute, should attempt to effectuate the intent of the Legislature” (Majewski v Broadalbin-Perth Cent. School Dist., 91 NY2d 577, 583 [1998] [internal quotation marks and citations omitted]), our goal should be to apply CPL 20.40 (2) (c) to this case as the Legislature would have intended it to apply. Since “the clearest indicator of legislative intent is the statutory text” (Majewski, 91 NY2d at 583), our starting point in construing CPL 20.40 must be the provision’s language.
CPL 20.40 states that “[a] person may be convicted in an appropriate criminal court of a particular county, of an offense of which the criminal courts of this state have jurisdiction pursuant to section 20.20 . . . when” any one of 19 statutory subsections is fulfilled. Subdivision (2) (c) vests geographical jurisdiction in a county “[e]ven though none of the conduct constituting such offense may have occurred within such county” if “[s]uch conduct had, or was likely to have, a particular effect upon such county or a political subdivision or part thereof, and was performed with intent that it would, or with knowledge that it was likely to, have such particular effect therein.” Belatedly, CPL 20.10 (4) defines a “particular effect” as a “materially harmful impact upon the governmental processes or community welfare of’ the county seeking to assert jurisdiction.
Where “the natural signification of the words employed” in a statute leaves “no room for construction . . . courts have no right to add to or take away from that meaning” and the task of judicial interpretation is finished (Majewski, 91 NY2d at 583 [internal quotation marks and citations omitted]). Here, the CPL’s text does not define “materially harmful impact,” “governmental processes,” or “community welfare”; nor does the text explain whether “particular” modifies “county” in addition to “effect.” Because the text of CPL 20.40 (2) (c) is not “too clear for construction” (see McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes § 76), we need to examine its legislative history—in particular, its general and specific derivation—in order to glean and “effectuate the intent of the Legislature.”
The drafting history of CPL 20.40 (2) establishes certain points critical to this appeal. First, CPL 20.40 (2) is a remedial statute, intended by the Legislature to remedy gaps in county jurisdiction created by the strict common-law rule of vicinage. Under the common law, a crime could only be prosecuted in a county in which all elements were performed; as a result, there was a jurisdictional “gap” for crimes that crossed county lines *432(for example, death is a result element of murder; if a defendant stabbed a victim in Nassau County, and the victim staggered into Queens County before dying, common-law vicinage would allow for jurisdiction in neither county).
As far back as 1881, however, the Legislature saw fit to remedy this deficiency in county jurisdiction, passing section 134 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCrP), a statute providing that “[w]hen a crime is committed, partly in one county and partly in another . . . the jurisdiction is in either county.” New York courts interpreting CCrP § 134 recognized the statute as remedial and therefore refused attempts to adopt “construction[s of the statute] that w[ere] never intended and which, to say the least, would be extremely technical” (People v Licenziata, 199 App Div 106, 110 [2d Dept 1921]).
In the 1960s, New York overhauled its criminal law and its law of criminal procedure, appointing a Temporary Commission on Revision of the Penal Law and Criminal Code. The Commission’s efforts led to the 1970 Criminal Procedure Law (see L 1970, ch 996), a “complete reconstruction from the ground up” in which “[t]he changes in substance w[ere] numerous and frequently of a fundamental nature” (6th Interim Rep of Temp Commn on Rev of Penal Law and Grim Code, 1967 NY Legis Doc No. 6, at 7). That said, many CPL provisions had some counterpart in the predecessor CCrE] and the CPL itself contains a derivation table indicating any CPL sections that were “specifically or generally derived” from coordinate provisions of the CCrP As relevant here, this table shows that section 20.40 (2) traces its general origins to CCrP § 134 (see L 1970, ch 996, at 3387).
While CPL 20.40 (2), like its general predecessor CCrP § 134, was a legislative remedy to strict common-law vicinage, the CPL did more than merely recodify the preexisting law of county jurisdiction, which the Commission described as “meager and shallow” (Staff Comment of Temp St Commn on Rev of Penal Law and Crim Code, 1967 Proposed NY CPL 10.40, at 45). Explaining section 10.40 (the forerunner of CPL 20.40), the Commission Staff wrote,
“The rules governing the jurisdiction of this state over offenses which may also be within the jurisdiction of another state are quite comparable to those governing the jurisdiction of a county over offenses which may also be within the jurisdiction of another *433county. In general, however, multiple county jurisdiction is bestowed more liberally than state jurisdiction, and there are several kinds of situations in which a county acquires jurisdiction of an offense pursuant to this section where the state, in an analogous inter-state situation, would not acquire jurisdiction under section 10.20” (id. at 45 [emphasis added]).
Thus, in addition to citing CPL 20.40 (2)’s remedial predecessor, the drafters of the CPL explained that while state and county geographical jurisdiction are similar, county geographical jurisdiction under CPL 20.40 is less strict (“bestowed more liberally”) than state geographical jurisdiction under CPL 20.20.
In sum, the Legislature intended the provisions of CPL 20.40 (2) to “prevent a miscarriage of justice” owing to county jurisdictional “limits prescribed by the common law” (Licenziata, 199 App Div at 111); and the Legislature also intended that the provisions of CPL 20.40 sweep more broadly than CPL 20.20 as a general matter. By construing the statute to allow a situation where there is geographical jurisdiction in the State but not in any of its individual counties, the majority ignores both propositions.
Our Precedent and the Facts in This Case
The majority (like the courts below) takes the position that our hands are tied by our precedent; that we must affirm because we decided in Matter of Taub v Altman (3 NY3d 30 [2004]) that there is no venue in this kind of case. The logic undergirding Taub and our earlier decisions in Matter of Steingut v Gold (42 NY2d 311 [1977]) and People v Fea (47 NY2d 70 [1979]) does not, however, mandate an affirmance here, where the facts are very different.
Steingut, Fea and Taub were animated by an apprehension that particular effect jurisdiction—a legislative “exception” to common-law conduct jurisdiction—might swallow up the common-law “rule.” Thus, in Taub we disclaimed the “People[’s] assertion] that. . . the City [in this case, the State] may be deprived of its ability to prosecute within its borders certain crimes, of which it is undeniably the victim” (3 NY3d at 38), because “particular effect jurisdiction is an alternative ground for venue . . . invoked only when jurisdiction does not lie on some other basis—such as the far more common scenario in which evidence exists that conduct establishing an element of *434the offense has occurred within” another New York county (id. at 38-39 [emphasis added]). We followed up this caveat with an even more explicit expression by stating that the criminal statute involved in Taub provided “jurisdiction will lie in any county where the defendant executed or mailed the [tax] return” (id. at 39). Similarly, in both Fea and Steingut, venue would have been proper in the New York county where the allegedly criminal conduct took place. There would have been no venue “gap” at common law, and the remedial nature of CPL 20.40 (2) (c) did not come into play.
In this case, however, county geographical jurisdiction could not lie in any New York county other than New York County; nor could geographical jurisdiction lie in any county under any theory of venue other than particular effect. Indeed, the majority appears to concede as much by suggesting that the Legislature might want to fill a perceived gap in the statute. Given that CPL 20.40 (2) (c) is remedial and that finding no jurisdiction in any county is contrary to legislative intent and objectionable as a matter of policy, there is no warrant for strictly construing this provision that, on its face, easily supports the grand jury’s finding of particular effect jurisdiction in New York County (see generally McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes § 141 [“In construing a statute which is ambiguous the construction to be adopted is the one which will not cause objectionable results”]). The majority has effectively rendered CPL 20.40 (2) (c) meaningless: on the one hand, it is “an alternative ground for venue . . . invoked only when jurisdiction does not lie on some other basis” (Taub, 3 NY3d at 38-39 [emphasis added]), but on the other hand (this case), it must be strictly construed and so may not be invoked in a situation where there is no alternative basis for geographical jurisdiction in any county despite the existence of geographical jurisdiction in the State (see majority op at 426-427).*
*435Read together with CPL 20.10 (4), CPL 20.40 (2) (c) vests a county with jurisdiction over criminal
“conduct [that] had, or was likely to have, [consequences which, though not necessarily amounting to a result or element of such offense, have a materially harmful impact upon the governmental processes or community welfare of a particular jurisdiction, or result in the defrauding of persons in such jurisdiction] . . . , and was performed with intent that it would, or with knowledge that it was likely to, have such [consequences] therein.”
The most direct effect of defendant’s alleged perjury in this case would be to impede the Attorney General’s investigation into anticompetitive practices in the tabletop market. The majority zeroes in on this, proclaiming that this is not an effect on the governmental processes of New York County. This analysis, however, misses the mark, particularly once the varnish of “strict construction” is stripped away from section 20.40 (2) (c) in light of the facts in this case.
The Donnelly Act vests the Attorney General with authority to conduct investigations as a preliminary to bringing judicial or grand jury proceedings (see General Business Law § 343). In this investigation, the Attorney General sent multiple subpoenaed interrogatories from New York County to Federated while defendant was CEO, several of which asked about certain principals’ meetings in New York County. Federated and the Attorney General entered into a confidentiality agreement while defendant was CEO of Federated, which specified that any issues of confidentiality or otherwise would be adjudicated in Supreme Court, New York County. The Attorney General was taking testimony from witnesses in New York County, which was the situs for every interview of a Federated employee or representative save defendant, who was interviewed in Ohio as a negotiated courtesy. Thus, there was sufficient evidence from which the grand jury might fairly and reasonably infer that the particular effect of defendant’s alleged perjury—to thwart or slow down the progress of an antitrust investigation—was likely *436to materially harm “governmental processes” in New York County, the probable venue for any eventual litigation. Any other result would reward a defendant whose perjury is successful, or would force the Attorney General to bring judicial or grand jury proceedings prematurely, without adequate preliminary inquiry.
Moreover, a secondary, but wholly foreseeable, effect of impeding the Attorney General’s investigation into anticompetitive behavior would be to undermine competition in the tabletop market—in other words, hindering an investigation fosters the underlying anticompetitive conduct sought to be deterred and/or punished. While the Attorney General might have a statewide focus generally, the conduct giving rise to his investigation was, among New York counties, particularly concentrated in New York County—where the tabletop industry’s showrooms were located and its trade shows were held, the “nerve center” of Federated’s New York operations, and the site of its flagship Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores. The “community welfare” of a county such as New York County includes not only its residents, but also its businesses. As a result, there was sufficient evidence from which the grand jury might fairly and reasonably infer that the particular effect of defendant’s alleged perjury—to reduce competition in the tabletop industry—was likely to materially harm the “community welfare” of New York County, where the industry was centered.
The final prerequisite for venue is defendant’s intent or knowledge that his perjury would have a particular effect on New York County. Here, defendant corresponded with representatives from the Attorney General’s office in New York County. As the longtime CEO of Federated, he had to have known that New York County was the focal point for the American tabletop industry and that Federated’s “nerve center” in New York State is in Manhattan. Defendant, to whom the corporate law department reported, likely knew that Federated had signed a consent agreement dictating that any disputes would be litigated in Supreme Court in New York County. Finally, defendant likely knew that his former colleagues at Federated had been interviewed in New York County in connection with an antitrust investigation related to events during his tenure as CEO, that defendant was the only Federated representative interviewed outside New York County, and that defendant’s own interview only took place in Ohio after requests to interview him in New York County had been rebuffed by his counsel. In light of these *437facts, there is sufficient circumstantial evidence for the grand jury to have reasonably inferred that, more likely than not, defendant knew his alleged perjury was likely to have a particular effect on New York County.
Conclusion
The majority appears to believe that we have been painted into a corner by the Legislature’s inadvertence or drafting mistake, and that the only means of escape is new legislation. I disagree. Because neither CPL 20.40 (2) (c)’s text nor our precedents mandate otherwise, I would decide the issue before us as the Legislature intended it to be decided, and would conclude that there was sufficient evidence to support the grand jury’s finding of particular effect jurisdiction in New York County. In light of the Court’s decision to the contrary, however, there is now no doubt that curative legislation is required if the Attorney General wishes to avoid today’s unpleasant outcome when he is forced to depose witnesses out of state in future investigations. As all prosecutors in New York should now realize, CPL 20.40 (2) (c) is a dead letter, except (perhaps) in the event a miscreant blows up a dam in Putnam County (see supra at 434 n).
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges Smith and Jones concur with Judge Ciparick; Judge Read dissents in a separate opinion in which Judges Graffeo and Pigott concur.
Order affirmed.

 The majority opinion has so eviscerated CPL 20.40 (2) (c) that it is questionable whether particular effect jurisdiction would lie, under the majority’s analysis, in the very example that it cites—where a “culprit maliciously blows up a dam in Putnam County near the Westchester County line, thus flooding some Westchester territory” (majority op at 428 [emphasis added]). A Putnam County dam-breaker, even one who floods “some Westchester territory,” cannot be said to have engaged in “conduct . . . violative of a statute intended to protect the integrity of the governmental processes or . . . harmful to the community as a whole,” yet the majority twice quotes this standard with approval (see majority op at 427, quoting Fea, 47 *435NY2d at 76-77). It is interesting, too, to note that the dam example cited by the majority originated in Richard G. Denzer’s practice commentary— mere paragraphs away from the statement that “[i]n general . . . multiple county jurisdiction or venue is bestowed more liberally than state jurisdiction” (McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 11A, CPL 20.40, at 54 [1971 ed]).