Court Opinion

ID: 9736917
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:09:56.778248+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:55.371965
License: Public Domain

Graffeo, J.
(dissenting). We respectfully dissent because we do not believe that the Appellate Division erred in concluding that defendant was not entitled to vacatur of his conviction of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree. We *131would therefore affirm the Appellate Division’s determination to reinstate the drug-sale conviction.
In November 1994, defendant pleaded guilty to selling cocaine in return for a 1-to- 3-year prison sentence that would run concurrently with a previously imposed sentence for a second-degree murder conviction. After defendant completed the term of imprisonment for the drug sale, his murder conviction was vacated and, in June 2000, he was acquitted on retrial of all charges pertaining to the homicide. Supreme Court subsequently vacated the drug conviction, concluding that it had been induced by the promise of a sentence that would be concurrent to the overturned murder conviction.
We agree with the majority that this Court has permitted plea vacatur where a guilty plea was induced by a promise to allow a defendant to receive a lesser sentence intended to run concurrently with a sentence imposed for another crime and that prior conviction is later vacated (see e.g. People v Taylor, 80 NY2d 1, 15 [1992]). In this case, however, we believe that vacatur is unwarranted because the lesser sentence was completed while defendant was serving a concurrent sentence and it is not manifestly unjust to hold defendant to his negotiated plea.
In People v Fuggazzatto (62 NY2d 862 [1984]), two indictments were filed simultaneously and were therefore subject to identical time periods for the People to announce their readiness for trial under CPL 30.30. The defendant’s CPL 30.30 motion to dismiss the indictments for untimely prosecution was denied and he elected to proceed to trial on the first indictment. After being convicted, the defendant pleaded guilty to the second indictment in exchange for a sentence that “would run concurrently with and not exceed the first.” On appeal of the first conviction, the Appellate Division reversed, concluding that the People failed to comply with CPL 30.30. This Court agreed. Having entered a guilty plea to the second indictment, however, the defendant had waived his right to raise the CPL 30.30 issue with respect to that conviction on appeal (see People v Savage, 54 NY2d 697, 698 [1981]). Because it would have been manifestly unjust to deprive the defendant of that relief, this Court concluded that vacatur of the plea was appropriate even though the concurrent sentence had been completed.
People v Boston (75 NY2d 585 [1990]) similarly illustrates circumstances under which it would be unfair to allow a plea to stand. The defendant in Boston—a 15-year-old boy—was indicted for attempted intentional murder in the second degree, *132first-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree. With the defendant’s consent, the People filed a superior court information charging one count of attempted depraved indifference murder based on the same criminal incident. After consolidation of the superior court information and the indictment, the defendant pleaded guilty to attempted depraved indifference murder and first-degree assault in return for two concurrent indeterminate prison terms. This Court overturned the attempted murder conviction on the ground that the defendant’s waiver of indictment was not in accord with CPL 195.10. The assault conviction was vacated as well because the assault was inextricably related to the murder, both having stemmed from the same criminal incident.
The same cannot be said in this case. Defendant pleaded guilty to a crime that was completely unrelated to the murder charge. He knowingly and voluntarily admitted that he sold cocaine and, in exchange, received the most lenient sentence allowed by law—1 to 3 years of imprisonment—rather than the 81/s to 25-year maximum sentence that could have been imposed. The prison term ran concurrently with the sentence imposed for the prior murder conviction, as defendant was promised, and he completed the drug-sale sentence well before the murder conviction was overturned (cf. People v Hooper, 302 AD2d 894, 895 [4th Dept 2003]). In other words, defendant received the full benefit of his negotiated bargain. Because the drug and murder prosecutions stemmed from unrelated incidents, the charges did not share any common defenses or procedural avenues of relief, and the concurrent murder sentence remained in full force until defendant completed his drug-sale sentence, there is nothing manifestly unfair about allowing the drug conviction to stand. In addition, it has now been almost a decade since defendant’s plea allocution, and this lapse of time will undoubtably impede the People’s ability to retry defendant.
Finally, there was no showing in the record that defendant would not have pleaded guilty and accepted the People’s offer if he had not been convicted of murder. The evidence against defendant was compelling, he received the most advantageous sentence possible and, most significantly, neither defendant nor his counsel suggested that defendant did not, in fact, sell the cocaine. In his motion to vacate the plea, defendant did not assert that he had a meritorious defense or contend that he would not have pleaded guilty if not for the murder conviction (see *133generally People v McDonald, 1 NY3d 109, 115 [2003]). Under the circumstances of this case, because defendant received the full benefit of his bargain and it would not be manifestly unfair to allow the plea to stand, we conclude that the Appellate Division did not abuse its discretion in finding insufficient justification to grant defendant’s motion.
Judges Cipakick, Rosenblatt and Read concur with Chief Judge Kaye; Judge Graffeo dissents and votes to affirm in a separate opinion in which Judge G.B. Smith concurs.
Order reversed, etc.