Court Opinion

ID: 9723718
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:28:46.583043+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:18.491706
License: Public Domain

R.S. Smith, J. (dissenting).
We dissent, and would hold that Michael M. waived his right to have a nonhearsay deposition filed in support of the juvenile delinquency petition when he failed to raise this issue at any time before taking an appeal.
I
On April 2, 2002, a 13-year-old boy with a bicycle was set upon by a gang of other boys near Yankee Stadium. The assailants, trying to steal the bicycle, punched the victim in the face, knocked him down and kicked him while he lay on the ground. Michael, 14, was arrested near the scene and identified by the *450victim and other witnesses as one of the participants in the assault.
Michael was arraigned on a felony complaint in Criminal Court. As is permissible (CPL 100.15 [3]), the Criminal Court complaint was based on hearsay; the arresting officer related what the victim had told him. Later, the prosecutor decided that a felony prosecution would not be necessary, and that a juvenile delinquency proceeding in Family Court would be preferable. On motion of the prosecution, and without objection, Michael’s case was removed to Family Court.
Family Court complaints, unlike felony complaints in Criminal Court, must contain, or be supported by depositions that contain, “non-hearsay allegations” (Family Ct Act § 311.2 [3]). Thus, after the case was removed, the City of New York, which was presenting the delinquency petition, should have submitted to the Family Court a deposition from the victim supporting the officer’s hearsay complaint (Matter of Desmond J., 93 NY2d 949 [1999]). The City omitted to do this. Michael did not complain of, or call the Family Court’s attention to, the omission.
The case proceeded to a hearing, and Family Court found that Michael had committed acts which, if committed by an adult, would have constituted attempted robbery in the first degree, assault in the second degree, and several other crimes. Michael was adjudged a juvenile delinquent and placed on probation for 24 months. The Family Court’s order of disposition required that he receive counseling and obey curfews. Michael appealed from this order and on appeal argued, for the first time, that the proceedings against him were flawed because no deposition containing “non-hearsay allegations” had been filed.
II
It is an unquestioned rule, applicable in almost all cases, that a litigant may not complain on appeal of errors that he did not bring to the attention of the lower court. There are a few exceptions, for errors so fundamental that justice requires their correction, but there is no reason in principle why a violation of the “non-hearsay” requirement of Family Court Act § 311.2 (3) should be placed in that category. Michael’s argument here, which the majority accepts, is based not on principle but on some peculiarities in our Court’s case law.
One of the errors considered so fundamental that it may be raised for the first time on appeal is the failure of an accusatory *451instrument to allege facts that constitute the charged crime. Where the acts the defendant allegedly committed do not violate the criminal statute on which the prosecution is based, we have permitted defendants to raise the issue on appeal even though they did not raise it below. We have grounded this result on the theory that an accusatory instrument that fails to allege essential facts is insufficient to confer jurisdiction on the trial court (People v Case, 42 NY2d 98 [1977]).
In Case, we stated the rule broadly: “A valid and sufficient accusatory instrument is a nonwaivable jurisdictional prerequisite to a criminal prosecution” (id. at 99; citation omitted). Language like this is open to the mistaken interpretation that not just a failure to allege facts constituting the charged crime, but every technical defect in the instrument, is a “nonwaivable jurisdictional” error. We made such a mistake, in dictum, in People v Alejandro (70 NY2d 133 [1987]). All we held in Alejandro was that a misdemeanor information charging defendant with resisting arrest was jurisdictionally deficient when the facts alleged failed to support an element of the charged crime— that the arrest in question was “authorized.” In stating the rule, however, we tracked the language of the statute governing misdemeanor informations, Criminal Procedure Law § 100.40 (1) (c)—which, like the Family Court Act section at issue in this case, contains a “non-hearsay” requirement. Thus, we said in Alejandro that an information which “lacked the necessary nonhearsay allegations which would establish, ‘if true, every element of the offense charged and the defendant’s commission thereof’ ” contained a “jurisdictional defect which was not waived by defendant’s failure to raise the issue until after completion of the trial” (id. at 134-135).
In People v Casey (95 NY2d 354, 362 [2000]) we found it necessary to “revisit” Alejandro and we retracted “Alejandro's suggestion that the . . . non-hearsay requirement of CPL 100.40 (1) (c) was ‘jurisdictional’ and, thus, non-waivable and reviewable on appeal without preservation.” Our holding in Casey rests in part on an analysis of the background and purpose of CPL 100.40 (1) (c), but ¿so in part on what we called “the general principles governing the narrow instances where this Court has departed from the requirement that errors in criminal proceedings have to be preserved at the trial court in order to be reviewable as an issue of law.” (Id. at 363.) We said in Casey.
“[T]he failure to preserve has been excused for only *452the most fundamental procedural irregularities . . . [I]t is only ‘where “the error complained of goes to the essential validity of the proceedings conducted below” such that “the entire trial is irreparably tainted,” [that] it need not be preserved to present a question of law reviewable by this Court’ (People v Agramonte, 87 NY2d 765, 770 [quoting People v Patterson, 39 NY2d 288, 295-296] [emphasis supplied]). Pleading errors involving omission of elements of the charged crime are fundamental. They impair a defendant’s basic rights to fair notice sufficient to enable preparation of a defense and to prevent double jeopardy. Hearsay pleading defects do not implicate any of those basic rights of an accused.” (Id. at 366 [emphasis added in part]; accord People v Keizer, 100 NY2d 114, 121 [2003] [“a purported hearsay defect in an accusatory instrument is nonjurisdictional”].)
The reasoning of Casey is convincing, and logically it should control our decision here. A problem arises, however, because, in a two-sentence dictum near the end of the Casey opinion, we distinguished juvenile delinquency proceedings from proceedings on Criminal Court misdemeanor informations, thus seeming to imply that the Casey rule would not apply in delinquency cases. We said:
“Contrastingly, a legally insufficient juvenile delinquency petition under Family Court Act § 311.2 (3), the counterpart to CPL 100.40 (1) (c), cannot be cured by amendment (see, Family Ct Act § 311.5 [2] [b]). Thus, we have held that hearsay pleading defects in delinquency petitions need not be preserved (see, Matter of Rodney J., 83 NY2d 503 [ ]; Matter of Detrece H., 78 NY2d 107).” (95 NY2d at 367.)
This dictum, unlike the rest of the Casey opinion, will not withstand analysis. The first sentence of the dictum distinguishes juvenile delinquency from misdemeanor cases because a flaw in a delinquency petition, unlike a flaw in a misdemeanor information, “cannot be cured by amendment.” As we noted in Casey, the curability of a procedural defect is an important factor weighing in favor of requiring preservation. However, although a defect in a delinquency petition cannot be cured by amendment, it can be cured. Here, for example, if Michael had *453made a timely motion to dismiss the petition, his motion presumably would have been successful, but the City could simply have brought another petition. Here, as in Casey, curability furnishes an important reason why preservation should be required.
The second sentence of the Casey dictum says “we have held” that hearsay defects in delinquency petitions are nonwaivable— but the two cases cited for that proposition do not support it. Neither Matter of Rodney J. (83 NY2d 503 [1994]) nor Matter of Detrece H. (78 NY2d 107 [1991]) involved any issue of waiver. In both cases, the alleged delinquent had preserved the defect in the petition by moving to dismiss in Family Court. The same is true of two other cases cited by the majority here, Matter of Jahron S. (79 NY2d 632 [1992]) and Matter of Neftalí D. (85 NY2d 631 [1995]). There appears to be only one case, Matter of David T. (75 NY2d 927 [1990]) in which we held that a hearsay defect in a delinquency petition was nonwaivable—and David T. is a brief memorandum decision in which we relied exclusively on Alejandro. There is no reason why the David T. holding should have survived our decision in Casey, 10 years later, to revisit Alejandro.
We thus conclude that the majority errs in following the Casey dictum. We would instead follow the Casey holding and the powerful reasoning that supports it, and would conclude that a hearsay defect in a delinquency petition, like a hearsay defect in a criminal court misdemeanor information, is nonjurisdictional and may be waived.
Ill
The result in this case is unfortunate. It is always unfortunate—though, of course, it is sometimes inevitable—when a meritorious case fails because of a lawyer’s omission to file the right piece of paper, but it is especially so in juvenile delinquency cases. Such cases serve not only to protect the community from troubled young people like Michael, but to give these young people themselves, to the extent that an imperfect system can manage it, the help they need. The rule the Court adopts today, by magnifying the consequences of a procedural error, correspondingly reduces the chances of doing practical good. When a boy or girl is adjudicated delinquent, and a court orders the services that it thinks most appropriate, the services may or may not help—but they will certainly not help if they are terminated in midstream because a lawyer has belatedly *454discovered a procedural glitch. Nor is it helpful to send the message to Michael, and to future Michaels, that violent and antisocial conduct will have no consequences if a lawyer can discover a long-neglected flaw in paperwork.
IV
Accordingly, we would affirm the decision of the Appellate Division.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges G.B. Smith, Ciparick and Rosenblatt concur with Judge Read; Judge R.S. Smith dissents and votes to affirm in a separate opinion in which Judge Graffeo concurs.
Order reversed, etc.