Court Opinion

ID: 9782817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:20:09.492821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:13.387470
License: Public Domain

Pigott, J.
(concurring). I agree with Chief Judge Lippman’s opinion that defendants are not entitled to have their sentences set aside; but I reach this conclusion for different reasons.
Under New York’s Penal Law, a court may sentence a defendant as a second felony offender only if certain statutory conditions are met. One of those conditions is the obvious one, that *304the sentence for the prior conviction must have been imposed before commission of the present felony (see Penal Law § 70.04 [1] [b] [ii]; § 70.06 [1] [b] [ii]).
People v Bell (73 NY2d 153 [1989]) is the seminal case addressing this rule. There, prior to pleading guilty to the predicate felony, the defendant was first successful in overturning two jury convictions. Defendant argued that the “sentence” for purposes of determining second felony offender status was the original sentence on the first overturned conviction, more than 10 years before the commission of his current crimes. This Court disagreed, holding that a “reversal” under the Criminal Procedure Law “means the vacating of such judgment” (CPL 470.10 [1]), which includes both the conviction and the sentence (CPL 1.20 [15]). Having successfully challenged his prior convictions, defendant could not thereafter claim that the date of the earliest reversed conviction controlled.
Unlike the scenario in Bell, when a defendant is resentenced based upon a Sparber error, the underlying conviction remains as does that part of the sentence imposing incarceration, because, under Sparber and its progeny, the purpose of the resentence is simply to provide a process to correct a “procedural error,” “akin to a misstatement or clerical error” (People v Sparber, 10 NY3d 457, 472 [2008]).
Our recent holding in People v Lingle (16 NY3d 621 [2011]) makes this clear. We stated specifically that in remitting those several cases to Supreme Court we did so “for resentencing and the proper judicial pronouncement of the relevant PRS terms” (id. at 634, quoting Sparber, 10 NY3d at 465 [emphasis omitted]). We distinguished the decretal paragraph we used in Sparber (10 NY3d at 473), which directed that “the order of the Appellate Division should be modified by remitting to Supreme Court for a resentencing hearing that will include the proper pronouncement of the relevant PRS term,” from the remittal language we have used in other resentencing cases, noting, for example, that in a case where the court erred in ruling that a defendant was a predicate felon, we remitted for the court to vacate the original sentence and to resentence the defendant.
The resentencing hearings that took place in these Sparber appeals were limited to remedying the specific procedural error of the sentencing judge; i.e., to make the required PRS pronouncement (Lingle, 16 NY3d at 635 [“Put another way, resentencing to set right the flawed imposition of PRS at the original sentencing is not a plenary proceeding”]). The *305convictions were undisturbed because the resentencing courts lacked the power to reconsider either the conviction or the incarceration component of the original sentence. As a result, the original sentence date remained. For these reasons, I would hold that when determining whether a defendant is a prior felony offender for purposes of sentencing under the Penal Law, the original sentence date on the prior conviction, and not the Sparber resentencing date, controls.