Court Opinion

ID: 9818963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:16:19.966935+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:28.560509
License: Public Domain

Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Westchester County (Neary, J.), rendered May 2, 2012, convicting him of attempted burglary in the first degree, upon his plea of guilty, and imposing sentence.
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed.
The defendant was charged in a single indictment with multiple criminal offenses arising from two separate incidents *894that occurred on June 29, 2010, and July 1, 2010. He subsequently moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground, inter alia, that his statutory right to a speedy trial had been violated (see CPL 30.30). Following a lengthy hearing on the matter, the Supreme Court (Molea, J.), issued a decision and order dated January 9, 2012, in which it granted the defendant’s motion. However, on the following day, and clearly within the time period for reargument, the court issued an amended decision and order with respect to its statutory speedy trial determination, granting the motion with respect to the first six counts of the indictment, but denying it with respect to counts seven, eight, and nine. In the amended decision and order, the court explained that, while the first six counts of the indictment pertained to the defendant’s conduct on June 29, 2010, and had to be dismissed because more than six months of unexcused delay had occurred between the filing of the felony complaint regarding that conduct and the People’s indication of readiness for trial, the criminal conduct underlying counts seven, eight, and nine was the subject of a second, separate felony complaint, and there was no evidence of a speedy trial violation with respect to those counts. In fact, the case file demonstrates that the People indicated their readiness for trial well within six calendar months after that second felony complaint was filed.
The prosecution of the defendant proceeded on counts seven, eight, and nine, which charged him with burglary in the first degree, robbery in the second degree, and menacing in the second degree, respectively. Thereafter, on March 6, 2012, the defendant entered a plea of guilty to the reduced charge of attempted burglary in the first degree in full satisfaction of the indictment. As a condition of the negotiated plea, the defendant conceded his status as a second violent felony offender and, on May 2, 2012, a judgment was rendered sentencing him in accordance with that status.
The defendant appeals from the judgment, contending that his plea must be vacated because the court erred in issuing the amended decision and order dated January 10, 2012, which denied his CPL 30.30 dismissal motion as to counts seven, eight, and nine, since the indictment had already been dismissed on the previous day, and the amended decision and order was “without legal basis or explanation.” We disagree.
Under the foregoing circumstances, the Supreme Court did not err in amending its initial decision and order to deny those branches of the defendant’s motion which were to dismiss counts seven, eight, and nine of the indictment. A court pos*895sesses “inherent authority to rectify a prior error in dismissing an indictment” (People v Bigwarfe, 128 AD3d 1170, 1171 [2015]; see People v Russ, 292 AD2d 862 [2002]), and “where there is a clearly erroneous dismissal of an indictment or count thereof, it is unreasonable to foreclose a court from reconsidering its previous determination” (People v Lynch, 162 AD2d 134, 134 [1990]; see People v Frederick, 62 AD3d 612 [2009], lv granted 12 NY3d 925 [2009]; affd 14 NY3d 913 [2010]; People v Contreras, 192 AD2d 417 [1993]), even in the absence of a formal motion for leave to reargue by the People (see People v Bigwarfe, 128 AD3d 1170 [2015]; People v Rosa, 265 AD2d 167 [1999]). Furthermore, under the facts of this case, there was no constitutional or statutory impediment to the court’s power to promptly modify its prior determination to dismiss the indictment and to thereby correct the previous error (see People v Rosa, 265 AD2d 167 [1999]; People v Lynch, 162 AD2d 134 [1990]; see also Matter of Lionel F., 76 NY2d 747 [1990]).
Here, the Supreme Court recognized the error only one day after issuing the initial decision and order, well within the time period during which, for example, a motion for leave to reargue could have been made and before the People even had a reasonable opportunity to make such a motion. Moreover, while any present challenge to the court’s determination of the statutory speedy trial issue in the amended decision and order was forfeited by the defendant’s knowing, voluntary, and intelligent plea of guilty (see People v O’Brien, 56 NY2d 1009 [1982]; People v Briggs, 123 AD3d 1051 [2014]; People v Bediako, 119 AD3d 598 [2014]; People v Sze, 113 AD3d 795 [2014]), we note, in any event, that the error in initially dismissing counts seven, eight, and nine based on an alleged statutory speedy trial violation was clearly apparent from the documents in the court file. Accordingly, the prompt issuance of the amended decision and order correcting the prior mistake in this case was not improper or jurisdictionally defective.
In reaching the opposite conclusion, our dissenting colleague does not dispute that the hearing court was factually correct in determining that the second felony complaint in this case was filed approximately six months after the first, and thus that the criminal charges emanating from that second felony complaint were not subject to a valid dismissal on statutory speedy trial grounds. Rather, relying upon several decisions which accurately recite the general proposition that a trial court loses jurisdiction to correct its own previous, nonclerical errors once final judgment has been rendered or sentence has commenced in a criminal action (see e.g. People v Richardson, *896100 NY2d 847 [2003]; Matter of Campbell v Pesce, 60 NY2d 165 [1983]; see also CPL 430.10), the dissent concludes that, once the hearing court in this case issued its initial determination dismissing the indictment, it lacked the authority to correct that determination on the following day to accord with the true facts of the case. However, the relevant decisions specifically addressing the timely correction of errors in orders dismissing indictments have uniformly determined that there is no impediment to the making of such corrections.
For example, in People v Bigwarfe (128 AD3d 1170 [2015]), as in this case, the indictment contained two sets of criminal charges that arose from distinct incidents occurring on different dates, and were the subject of separate accusatory instruments filed at different times. The defendant therein moved to dismiss the entire indictment on the ground that his statutory right to a speedy trial had been violated. The trial court initially granted the motion and dismissed the indictment. However, although no formal motion for leave to reargue had been made, the court reconsidered the dismissal upon a letter request by the prosecution, and thereafter reinstated the counts of the indictment that were set forth in the second accusatory instrument, since no CPL 30.30 violation had occurred as to them. In affirming the court’s determination, the Appellate Division, Third Department, held that the reinstatement of the counts constituted a proper exercise of the court’s “inherent authority to rectify a prior error in dismissing an indictment” (id. at 1171). Accordingly, the decision in Bigwarfe fully supports an affirmance in the present case. Moreover, Appellate Division decisions in the First Department and the Fourth Department similarly have recognized a trial court’s inherent power to timely rectify a prior error by reinstating a previously dismissed indictment (see People v Russ, 292 AD2d 862 [2002]; People v Rosa, 265 AD2d 167 [1999]; People v Lynch, 162 AD2d 134 [1990]).
The dissent posits that the foregoing decisions are distinguishable from the present case because they did not involve sua sponte corrective orders. However, no formal motion to correct the error was made in People v Bigwarfe or in People v Rosa, and the dissent does not cite any statutory or decisional authority requiring the making of either a formal motion or an informal application as a precondition to the court’s corrective action. Nor does the dissent point to any logical basis for engrafting such a requirement upon the court’s exercise of its inherent powers. In this regard, we decline to adopt the incongruous proposition that a court may exercise its well-*897established inherent power to correct errors in its orders only when a party affirmatively requests that it do so.
Additionally, there is a more fundamental problem in the dissent’s attempt to distinguish the foregoing decisions from the present case on the basis that the court acted sua sponte here. If, as the dissent maintains, the Supreme Court lost all jurisdiction to act in this matter once it issued the order dismissing the entire indictment pursuant to CPL 30.30, then that court would be powerless to correct any errors in its order, regardless of whether it sought to do so on its own motion in the exercise of its inherent authority, or pursuant to a formal motion (e.g., for leave to reargue) made by the prosecution for the same relief. Of course, that is not the law. Rather, the Court of Appeals and our own Court have entertained numerous appeals in cases where a trial court granted a motion for leave to reargue with regard to an order dismissing the entire indictment under CPL 30.30, and all of the resulting appellate decisions have reviewed the merits of the orders made upon re-argument without any suggestion that those orders were improper because the trial courts no longer possessed jurisdiction to render them (see e.g. People v Chavis, 91 NY2d 500 [1998]; People v Lynch, 103 AD3d 919 [2013]; People v Smith, 88 AD3d 749 [2011]; People v Aaron, 201 AD2d 574 [1994]). The foregoing case law demonstrates that a trial court retains the authority both to entertain a motion for leave to reargue and to exercise its inherent power to correct errors following the dismissal of an indictment pursuant to CPL 30.30. In arguing that an order of dismissal pursuant to CPL 30.30 deprives the court of jurisdiction to act any further in the matter, the dissent would effectively vitiate the prosecution’s right, repeatedly recognized in the foregoing decisions, to timely seek re-argument in connection with such dismissals.
Finally, the dissent makes the related assertion that a motion by the People in this case for leave to reargue to correct the date of filing of the second felony complaint would have been fruitless. However, the potential merit of such a motion is irrevelant to the present discussion. It is the fact that a motion for leave to reargue could have been entertained by the court— rather than whether it would have been successful — that is significant, for if the People could seek to correct the error in the dismissal order by way of reargument, and if the court had the authority to entertain the merits of such a motion (as case law instructs that it does), then there is no reason that the hearing court could not similarly act to correct the error in the exercise of its inherent authority, as the relevant case law *898holds and as was done here. Moreover, even if we were to accept the dissent’s proposition that reargument would have been inappropriate because the People previously had relied upon the erroneous filing date in opposing the dismissal motion, that oversight by the People did not compel the hearing court to likewise adopt the demonstrably false filing date and to refrain from exercising its inherent corrective powers to rectify the error once it was discovered. The dissent’s suggestion that the court was bound to accept allegations of fact which it knew to be inaccurate from the face of the record is unpersuasive, and we find no legal support for compelling a trial court to adopt a fictional account of a case under these circumstances merely because the parties have erroneously done so. Indeed, it appears that the erroneous date at issue in this case, which was evident on the face of the record and could not have been controverted by the defendant, is precisely the type of mistake that the court’s inherent power to correct errors is designed to remedy.
Thus, the significance of noting the People’s ability to seek reargument in the context of CPL 30.30 dismissal orders lies in demonstrating that the trial court’s exercise of its inherent power to correct the error in this case was authorized and timely, having been made well within the period during which reargument could have been sought and considered. Accordingly, since the hearing court in the present case could have entertained a timely motion for leave to reargue to correct its initial order, it properly exercised its inherent authority to correct the error in that order a mere day after it was issued, without awaiting the making of such a motion by the People. As such, a valid indictment was pending at the time of the defendant’s plea, and his plea of guilty was not jurisdictionally defective.
In view of the foregoing discussion, we do not address the parties’ remaining contentions.
Mastro, J.P., Miller and Duffy, JJ., concur.