Court Opinion

ID: 9782495
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 18:52:42.099509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:03.480830
License: Public Domain

Read, J.
(dissenting in Ventura and concurring in Gardner). Criminal Procedure Law § 470.60 vests the Appellate Division with discretion to dismiss a pending appeal, subject to our review for legal error or abuse of discretion only. The majority now holds that it is always an abuse of discretion for the Appellate Division to dismiss the criminal appeal of an involuntarily deported noncitizen on the sole basis of unavailability. I respectfully dissent. While I concur in the result in Gardner on abuse-of-discretion grounds, I would affirm in Ventura.
I
The majority offers three rationales for its holding: (1) involuntarily deported noncitizen defendants have a “great[ ] need” for their appeals to be heard because of the “tremendous ramifications of deportation” (majority op at 680); (2) every criminal defendant possesses a statutory right to intermediate appellate review (id. at 682); and (3) in other jurisdictions, involuntarily deported noncitizens “who continue prosecution of their appeals through representation of counsel are not deemed unavailable to obey the mandate of the court” (id.). These suggested rationales do not furnish a basis for us to replace the Appellate Division’s statutorily conferred discretion to dismiss a pending criminal appeal with a categorical rule that strips the *683court of this discretion when the defendant happens to be an involuntarily deported noncitizen.1
First, deportation indisputably entails “tremendous ramifications.” By definition, someone who is involuntarily deported would have preferred to continue to reside in this country, presumably because of the unwelcome “ramifications” of removal. But that is not a reason for a criminal appeal to go forward in those cases where the appeal’s outcome would have no bearing on the defendant’s immigration status — i.e., cases in which the conviction being appealed did not cause the defendant’s deportation2 or prevent or complicate his potential return to the United States. Where the Appellate Division has information indicating that such a causal connection exists, I agree that it would be an abuse of discretion to dismiss the appeal on the sole basis of the defendant’s unavailability. But absent such information, the Appellate Division may, if it so chooses, dismiss the appeal of a defendant who is involuntarily physically absent from the jurisdiction, and we are not authorized to second-guess this discretionary decision.
Second, no one disputes that all defendants have “an absolute right to seek appellate review of their convictions” at the Appellate Division (majority op at 679). But this right is qualified by the Appellate Division’s “broad discretion” to dismiss a criminal appeal, “whether on a party’s motion or sua sponte, for any reason that will cause or has caused substantial interference with the appellate process” (Preiser, Practice Commentaries, McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 11A, CPL 470.60, at 352), as already noted.
*684In People v Diaz (7 NY3d 831 [2006]), we ourselves exercised the discretion afforded “the appellate court” by Criminal Procedure Law § 470.60 (1) to dismiss the appeal of an involuntarily deported noncitizen on the ground that he was not presently available to obey the court’s mandate. As was also the case with defendants Ventura and Gardner, the dismissal in Diaz was without prejudice to a subsequent motion to reinstate the appeal in the event the defendant was permitted to reenter the country and returned to New York.
Apparently unwilling to overrule a recent precedent, the majority observes that we are “a court of permissive appellate jurisdiction” while the Appellate Division “do[es] not enjoy such unencumbered latitude” and assumes a “distinct role . . . within New York’s hierarchy of appellate review” because of its “fact-finding function [and] ability to reach unpreserved issues” (majority op at 681). But Criminal Procedure Law § 470.60 (1) makes no distinction on any basis (much less differences in appellate review powers) between our discretionary authority to dismiss a pending criminal appeal and the Appellate Division’s.
Finally, the majority cites only one decision of an intermediate appellate court in a sister state — People v Puluc-Sique (182 Cal App 4th 894, 106 Cal Rptr 3d 365 [2010]) — as evidence that other jurisdictions adhere to the new rule it has fashioned, and even this case is not on point. In Puluc-Sique, the People argued that the court was required to dismiss the defendant’s appeal because deportation placed him beyond the jurisdiction of California’s courts (182 Cal App 4th at 899, 106 Cal Rptr 3d at 369). The court rejected this proposition, but did not adopt the majority’s position — i.e., that a court may never dismiss the criminal appeal of an involuntarily deported noncitizen on the sole basis of unavailability. Instead, the court concluded that “[a]ppellate disentitlement is a discretionary doctrine that must be applied in a manner that takes into account the equities of the individual case,” and that the equities present in this particular individual case did not favor dismissal of the defendant’s appeal (182 Cal App 4th at 901, 106 Cal Rptr 3d at 370 [emphasis added]).
Indeed, although the arguably relevant out-of-state cases are few in number, not one of our sister states takes the approach adopted by the majority. Instead, these decisions appear to turn on whether the conviction being appealed caused the defendant’s deportation or prevented or complicated his potential return to the United States. For example, over 20 years ago the *685Supreme Court of Washington in State v Ortiz (113 Wash 2d 32, 774 P2d 1229 [1989]) reversed the intermediate appellate court’s judgment dismissing an involuntarily deported noncitizen’s criminal appeal, but on the basis that the conviction sought to be appealed precluded the defendant’s return to this country (see also Cuellar v State, 13 SW3d 449, 451 [Tex App 2000] [appeal of narcotics conviction is not moot where conviction prevents individual from reentering United States or obtaining visa]; People v Garcia, 89 P3d 519, 520 [Colo App 2004] [appeal dismissed as moot “because defendant is no longer in the United States and is subject to a permanent bar on attempted reentry into this country, he will not serve his sentence here, and thus, the outcome of the appeal has no practical effect upon him”]).
Here, defendant Damian Gardner was deported for overstaying his visa. The People informed the Appellate Division, however, that defendant’s wife, an American citizen, had “filed an 1-485 petition [with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement] requesting that defendant’s immigration status be adjusted, but that the petition was denied because of defendant’s criminal record”-, and that “defendant’s conviction did affect his immigration status in that his wife’s petition may have been granted had he not been convicted of the crime in this case” (emphasis added). In light of these circumstances, I conclude that the Appellate Division abused its discretion when it dismissed Gardner’s appeal on the sole basis of his unavailability to obey the court’s mandate. Conversely, there is nothing in the record to suggest that the conviction for which defendant Carlos Ventura sought review — as opposed to his unrelated, and unappealed, judgment of conviction and sentence for burglary — caused his deportation or would prevent or complicate his potential return to the United States. Nor is there any other information in the record that would support a determination on our part that the Appellate Division abused its discretion when it dismissed Ventura’s appeal on the ground that he was unavailable to obey the court’s mandate.
II
The majority’s decision seems to be motivated, at least in part, by a suspicion that the Appellate Divisions have interpreted Diaz to endorse the dismissal of the criminal appeals of involuntarily deported noncitizen defendants on unavailability grounds in all cases, without exception. To the extent this is so (and I do *686not see evidence of it), the proper corrective for blanket dismissals is not a rule requiring the blanket denial of dismissals, which is what the majority has created. Criminal Procedure Law § 470.60 sets the standard: the Appellate Division possesses discretion to consider dismissal motions on their individual merits, subject to our review for legal error or abuse of discretion. Even assuming that we may properly curb the Appellate Division’s discretion in a way that section 470.60 does not, this would seem to be very poor policy: especially in an era of increasing case loads and fiscal constraints, the Appellate Division should be able to decide not to spend its time on an appeal whose outcome would have no practical effect because the defendant has been deported from this country and enjoys no discernible prospects for reentry.
Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Ciparick and Smith concur with Judge Jones; Judge Read dissents and votes to affirm in a separate opinion in which Judges Graffeo and Pigott concur.
In People v Ventura: Order reversed, etc.
Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Ciparick and Smith concur with Judge Jones; Judge Read concurs in result in a separate opinion in which Judges Graffeo and Pigott concur.
In People v Gardner: Order reversed, etc.

. Defendants did not advocate for the categorical rule fashioned by the majority. They instead argued only that “a defendant who has a pending direct appeal prior to deportation and raises only dismissal issues is entitled to have that appeal decided on the merits by the Appellate Division” (emphasis added). As a result, the People had no notice that the Court was considering the unqualified rule it has now adopted, and consequently no opportunity to brief us about any practical problems or infelicitous effects of such a rule.

. There would seem to be little chance for this to happen, though, because the Second Circuit has traditionally followed the finality rule whereby an alien has the right to exhaust all direct appeals before the underlying criminal conviction can serve as the basis for removal (see Walcott v Chertoff, 517 F3d 149, 155 [2d Cir 2008] [“(t)he decision to appeal a conviction . . . suspends an alien’s deportability . . . until the conviction becomes final”]). Amici curiae contend, however, that the case law in the Second Circuit is less settled than Walcott seems to indicate, and that United States immigration authorities may be expected to continue to seek to remove defendants whose appeals are pending in the Appellate Division and, in any event, often transfer such defendants to other jurisdictions where the finality rule has been eliminated.