Court Opinion

ID: 9723709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:28:24.723612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:51.348565
License: Public Domain

R.S. Smith, J. (dissenting).
I agree with the majority that the evidence was sufficient to permit a correctly-charged jury to convict defendant of first degree murder, and that the Sandoval error of which defendant complains was harmless. I dissent from affirmance of the conviction, however, because I believe the jury was incorrectly charged on the definition of “criminal transaction.” The definition used in the charge, while broadening the scope of the subparagraph of the Penal Law involved in this case, shrinks an important part of another subparagraph— the “common scheme or plan” branch of the serial murder statute—to the vanishing point.
Murder in the first degree is defined in Penal Law § 125.27 (1). Section 125.27 (1) (a) lists, in 13 subparagraphs, the aggravating factors that can convert second degree murder to first degree murder. Two of those subparagraphs—subparagraph (viii), the one at issue here, and subparagraph (xi), the serial murder subparagraph—use the term “criminal transaction.” Section 125.27 (1) (a) (viii) provides that first degree murder occurs where:
*535“(viii) as part of the same criminal transaction, the defendant, with intent to cause serious physical injury to or the death of an additional person or persons, causes the death of an additional person or persons; provided, however, the victim is not a participant in the criminal transaction” (emphasis added).
Section 125.27 (1) (a) (xi) says a killing may be murder in the first degree where:
“(xi) the defendant intentionally caused the death of two or more additional persons within the state in separate criminal transactions within a period of twenty-four months when committed in a similar fashion or pursuant to a common scheme or plan” (emphasis added).
Thus subparagraph (viii) applies only where crimes are committed “as part of the same criminal transaction” and subparagraph (xi) only where they are committed “in separate criminal transactions.” The two subparagraphs are mutually exclusive, and to expand or contract the definition of “criminal transaction” is a zero sum game: the more cases the definition includes, the more cases will fit within subparagraph (viii) and the fewer within subparagraph (xi). The flaw in the majority opinion, I believe, is that it never addresses this aspect of the statute. It discusses at some length another difference between subparagraphs (viii) and (xi)—that the former uses the present tense and the latter the past. But that discussion is irrelevant to my point, which is that the definition of “criminal transaction” affects each subparagraph in a fundamentally opposite way. For that reason the term should, if possible, be defined in a way that gives meaningful scope to both subparagraphs.
The Legislature has left it to the courts to select a definition. It did not define the term “criminal transaction” for purposes of Penal Law § 125.27; it could have, but did not, adopt the definition contained in CPL 40.10 (2), which is as follows:
“ ‘Criminal transaction’ means conduct which establishes at least one offense, and which is comprised of two or more or a group of acts either (a) so closely related and connected in point of time and circumstance of commission as to constitute a single criminal incident, or (b) so closely related in criminal purpose or objective as to constitute elements or integral parts of a single criminal venture.”
*536Like the majority, I do not read into the Legislature’s failure to adopt the CPL definition an implied rejection of it. I agree that we are free to adopt that definition for purposes of Penal Law § 125.27 if we think it the best available. But we are not compelled to adopt it, and in my view it is not the best available. I would adopt instead only subsection (a) of CPL 40.10 (2), and I would define “criminal transaction” to mean “conduct which establishes at least one offense, and which is comprised of two or more or a group of acts so closely related and connected in point of time and circumstance of commission as to constitute a single criminal incident.”
If this definition is adopted, Penal Law § 125.27 (1) (a) (viii) will continue to have substantial content. Anyone who kills two people where the killings are sufficiently close in time and circumstance of commission will be guilty of first degree murder under subparagraph (viii). This definition would clearly permit the present defendant to be convicted of first degree murder. His two killings were only about an hour and a half apart and were linked by a continuous chain of circumstances: a jury could well have found that they were parts of “a single criminal incident.”
But it is a mistake, in my view, to include the second half of the CPL definition—acts “so closely related in criminal purpose or objective as to constitute elements or integral parts of a single criminal venture”—when defining “criminal transaction” for Penal Law § 125.27 purposes. When this part of the definition is applied to Penal Law § 125.27 (1) (a) (xi) it produces a result that is strange at best. Subparagraph (xi) applies to crimes that occur “in separate criminal transactions . . . pursuant to a common scheme or plan.” Under the definition the majority adopts, this must mean crimes that are not “so closely related in criminal purpose or objective as to constitute elements or integral parts of a single criminal venture” and yet are part of “a common scheme or plan.” The language seems almost perfectly self-contradictory; I cannot think of a single case to which it would apply, and neither the People’s brief in this case nor the majority opinion offers an example. Thus the majority’s definition effectively nullifies the “common scheme or plan” branch of Penal Law § 125.27 (1) (a) (xi). Subparagraph (xi) would have meaning only as applied to crimes committed in “separate criminal transactions ... in a similar fashion.” When the Legislature added the words “or pursuant to a common scheme or plan” it was apparently wasting its breath.
*537Accordingly, I would reverse the defendant’s conviction on the ground that the trial court erroneously adopted the definition of “criminal transaction” contained in CPL 40.10 (2) (b).
Judges G.B. Smith, Rosenblatt and Graffeo concur with Judge Read; Judge R.S. Smith dissents and votes to reverse in a separate opinion in which Chief Judge Kaye and Judge Ciparick concur.
Order affirmed.