Court Opinion

ID: 9917013
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-11 14:05:29.565188+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:54:44.884568
License: Public Domain

State of New York                                              MEMORANDUM
Court of Appeals                                          This memorandum is uncorrected and subject to
                                                        revision before publication in the New York Reports.

 No. 43 SSM 10
 The People &c.,
         Respondent,
      v.
 Fabian Greene,
         Appellant.

 Submitted by Margaret E. Knight, for appellant.
 Submitted by Philip V. Tisne, for respondent.

 MEMORANDUM:

       The order of the Appellate Division should be modified by vacating the conviction

 for count 3 and dismissing that count of the indictment and, as so modified, affirmed.

                                            -1-
                                           -2-                                SSM No. 10

      A multiplicitous indictment “creates the risk that a defendant will be punished for,

or stigmatized with a conviction of, more crimes than [they] actually committed” (People

v Alonzo, 16 NY3d 267, 269 [2011]). Even when the multiplicitous convictions do not

increase the defendant’s sentence, the stigma of impermissible convictions endures and

must be remedied. Thus, when a defendant is convicted of multiplicitous charges, the

proper remedy is vacatur of all but one of the multiplicitous convictions and dismissal of

those counts of the indictment, regardless of whether that corrective action has any effect

on the defendant’s sentence. Here, there is no dispute regarding the Appellate Division’s

conclusion that the two counts of perjury of which defendant was ultimately convicted

were multiplicitous. As the People concede, the proper remedy is therefore dismissal of

one of the convictions.

      Defendant’s argument that the trial court permitted a witness to impermissibly

instruct the jury on the law concerning materiality does not warrant reversal of his other

convictions. Defendant’s remaining contentions are unpreserved for appellate review.

                                           -2-
WILSON, Chief Judge (concurring):

       I concur but write separately because Mr. Greene’s case illustrates a fundamental

problem with the way in which minor antisocial behavior results in a wholly

disproportionate result.

                                          -1-
                                           -2-                                 SSM No. 10

                                              I.

       Mr. Greene appeared pro se below.           Although his grand jury testimony is

inconsistent with the facts adduced at trial, by the time of trial both he and the People

agreed to the same set of facts: Mr. Greene, in his opening, asked the jury to acquit him if

the People failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had the requisite criminal

intent to commit grand larceny and perjury.

       According to the complainant, Jayne Chu, at approximately 10:10 P.M. on April 26,

2017, she and her boyfriend Benjamin Olschner were returning home from a date followed

by a drink with a friend at a bar. To avoid walking on the sidewalk in front of a funeral

home, which Ms. Chu considered bad luck, she and Mr. Olschner left the sidewalk and

entered the street. Mr. Greene, who was riding his bicycle the wrong way, swerved to

avoid them and yelled at them that they were “in the fucking way.” Both Ms. Chu and Mr.

Greene had something to drink shortly before their encounter. According to Ms. Chu, Mr.

Greene was wearing “a really nice outfit” and a “distinctive straw cowboy hat.” Ms. Chu

yelled “something not very nice back” to the effect that Mr. Greene was in the way. Mr.

Greene stopped and rode back to where Ms. Chu and Mr. Olschner were, and Ms. Chu and

Mr. Greene (but not Mr. Olschner) got into what Ms. Chu described as a “dumb argument”

about who was in the wrong for the near collision, during which “we both got more and

more excited as we were arguing with each other.”

       Ms. Chu, who describes herself as “not the kind of person to step away that easily,”

walked with Mr. Greene from the street to the sidewalk corner to continue their argument

and were standing about a yard apart and “yelling at each other” for about five minutes.

                                           -2-
                                            -3-                                 SSM No. 10

Mr. Greene identified himself to the couple several times as Fabian Greene, and called

himself “the King of Chinatown,” whom everyone knows. At points, Ms. Chu said they

“were talking and we were not yelling at each other” and both had said “let’s just agree to

disagree” about who was in the wrong for the near collision. At the point where the verbal

altercation “really escalated,” Ms. Chu said she would call the police, and when she took

out her phone and attempted to take a photo of Mr. Greene, he grabbed her phone, hopped

on his bike and rode off, leaving his bag behind. Ms. Chu yelled at him, “you left your

bag, you moron,” but Mr. Greene continued riding away, and Ms. Greene took his bag

while Mr. Olschner used his phone to call the police.

       Because Mr. Greene had repeatedly announced his real name to Ms. Chu, she and

Mr. Olschner were immediately able to find his public profile on Facebook, provide that

to the police, and track her phone using Mr. Olschner’s phone.

       The police located Mr. Greene with Ms. Chu’s phone less than 30 minutes after Mr.

Greene rode off with it. He was seated at a nearby internet café. Mr. Greene was arrested

and held in pretrial detention for 13 months. At trial the jury convicted him of one count

of fourth-degree larceny for taking Ms. Chu’s phone and two counts of first-degree perjury

in connection with his grand jury testimony; the court sentenced Mr. Greene to four to eight

years in prison.

       In short, two New Yorkers got into a protracted argument about whether a jaywalker

or a wrong-way cyclist was in the wrong. Ms. Chu was uninjured and received her phone

shortly after Mr. Greene took it. Mr. Greene did not seek out a victim to attack or an object

to steal, but spontaneously reacted in the midst of a heated argument by taking Ms. Chu’s

                                            -3-
                                            -4-                                 SSM No. 10

phone when she attempted to take his picture. As Ratso Rizzo might attest, this case arose

from a quotidian dispute of the kind familiar to most New Yorkers: two people in a shouting

match after nearly bumping into each other in the street.

       Mr. Greene had previously been convicted of several offenses, consisting of

misdemeanors (including trademark counterfeiting and turnstile jumping) and nonviolent

felonies. Mr. Greene was represented by a defense attorney at sentencing; his lawyer

explained that he needed mental health services, not a lengthy incarceration. The People

asked that all of Mr. Greene’s convictions—for grand larceny and for perjury—run

concurrently, for a sentence of 3.5 to 7 years. Instead, the court ran the sentences for

larceny and perjury consecutively, for a total of 4 to 8 years.

       Doubtless, property theft is not an acceptable escalation of a verbal conflict. But

Mr. Greene, by his counsel’s representation at sentencing, by his own statements at that

time, and by reference to the events leading up to this conviction, is in need of mental

health services. Persons intent on robbery do not typically announce their real names to

their victims or get into long public arguments ranging from conciliatory to threatening

before absconding with property. Instead of providing a path to those services, the criminal

justice system ordered Mr. Greene incarcerated for at least four years, at an approximate

cost to taxpayers of nearly a half a million dollars—closer to a million should he serve the

full eight-year term.1

1
 See Julian Harris-Calvin et al., The Cost of Incarceration in New York State, Vera Institute
(Oct 31, 2022), available at https://www.vera.org/the-cost-of-incarceration-in-new-york-
state#:~:text=New%20York%20invests%20tens%20of,more%20than%20%2482%2C00
                                            -4-
                                           -5-                                 SSM No. 10

       At trial, Ms. Chu offered that she should have walked away, and in retrospect wished

she had done so. Mr. Greene, too, retrospectively wished he had not persisted in the

argument. Our justice system should not be incapable of asking Ms. Chu whether she

would prefer directing Mr. Greene to mental health resources instead of a lengthy prison

stay, or incapable of making the decision that regardless of what the law allows by way of

incarceration, Mr. Greene and the broader community would be better served by treatment

rather than incarceration. The Unified Court System has taken baby steps in that direction,

but Mr. Greene’s case powerfully illustrates how much more could be done.

       Treating incarceration as the default response to individuals convicted of low-level

offenses has outsized deleterious consequences that, ultimately, make our communities less

safe: the cycle of incarceration further destabilizes these individuals; mental health

treatment in prison is costlier than community-based treatment; individuals with mental

illness are at greater risk of detention in prison and extended incarceration; prison mental

health resources are often inadequate; and individuals living with mental illness face

greater risk of harm and abuse while behind bars.2

0%20per%20year (last accessed Dec 28, 2023) (“In state prisons, New York spends an
average of . . . nearly $115,000 . . . to incarcerate one person”).
2
  See State Justice Institute, Improving the Justice System Response to Mental Illness: A
Fact Sheet (Apr 20, 2020); Joseph Vanable, NAMI, The Cost of Criminalizing Serious
Mental Illness, https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/March-2021/The-Cost-of-
Criminalizing-Serious-Mental-
Illness#:~:text=The%20average%20cost%20for%20psychiatric%20treatment%20in%20a
,have%20a%20better%20chance%20of%20bringing%20about%20recovery (Mar 24,
2021) (based on the average cost of psychiatric treatment in a community-based hospital
“for an adult, the cost of 35 to 83 days in prison would provide the financing of a
hospitalization that would have a better chance of bringing about recovery”); Megan J.
Wolff, Weill Cornell Medicine Psychiatry, Fact Sheet: Incarceration and Mental Health,
                                           -5-
                                            -6-                                  SSM No. 10

       Another approach worth pursuing is sometimes referred to as “restorative justice”—

a non-punitive approach designed to facilitate reconciliation between an offender and a

victim through dialogue and interpersonal restitution. The practice “is based on the values

of shared power, voluntary participation, and equal voice” (Shailly Agnihotri & Cassie

Veach, Reclaiming Restorative Justice: An Alternate Paradigm for Justice, 20 CUNY L

Rev 323, 326-327 [2017]). Restorative justice models in the criminal justice system

attempt to “shift the focus from the relationship between the State and the accused to the

human relationships impacted by the crime” (id. at 336).3

       Here, Ms. Chu explicitly stated that she wished the criminal justice system had not

become involved in the dispute. When asked why she did not walk away from the

argument she testified that she “felt like [they] were actually engaging with each other . . .

connecting with each other,” and that she wished they had walked away because then each

of the parties could be elsewhere instead of having to endure a criminal process. She went

on to testify, however, that she “didn’t walk away because [she] felt like [Mr. Greene]

https://psychiatry.weill.cornell.edu/research-institutes/dewitt-wallace-institute-
psychiatry/issues-mental-health-policy/fact-sheet-0#footnoteref48_2jzqryh (last updated
May 30, 3017) (“prison conditions . . . are strongly correlated with emerging and worsening
psychiatric symptoms. . . . psychiatric symptoms may be difficult to distinguish from
aggressive or deviant behavior, resulting in further punishment”).
3
  A reputable meta-analysis of emerging scholarship on restorative justice found that
“restorative justice programs are a more effective method of improving victim and/or
offender satisfaction, increasing offender compliance with restitution, and decreasing the
recidivism of offenders when compared to more traditional criminal justice responses (i.e.,
incarceration, probation, court-ordered restitution, etc.)” (Jeff Latimer, Craig Dowden &
Danielle Muise, The Effectiveness of Restorative Justice Practices: A Meta-Analysis, 82
Prison J 127, 138 [June 2005]).
                                            -6-
                                            -7-                                  SSM No. 10

wasn’t giving [her] the validation to hear what [she] wanted to say . . . [a]nd that [she] was

being stubborn . . . and dumb.”

       A restorative justice approach would have not only prevented the protracted

prosecution—which burdened both parties, taxpayers and the courts—but it might have

given Ms. Chu an opportunity to express her frustration with Mr. Greene in a direct and

productive dialogue, and an opportunity to feel validated in that completely reasonable

frustration.   Furthermore, it might have given the parties the opportunity to reach

conciliation instead of continuing to confront each other in an adversarial posture, and it

could have given the system a chance to offer Mr. Green mental health support in a

community, non-carceral setting.

       The reflexive incarceration of people like Mr. Greene is not uncommon. We need

to build a system that better protects our society from antisocial behaviors by offering

options superior to incarceration, both in effect and cost.

On review of submissions pursuant to section 500.11 of the Rules, order modified by
vacating the conviction for count 3 and dismissing that count of the indictment and, as so
modified, affirmed, in a memorandum. Chief Judge Wilson and Judges Rivera, Garcia,
Singas, Cannataro, Troutman and Halligan concur, Chief Judge Wilson in a concurring
opinion.

Decided January 11, 2024

                                            -7-