Court Opinion

ID: 9782663
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:04:16.908581+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:07.602621
License: Public Domain

Smith, J. (dissenting).
On the face of the applicable statutes, the result the majority reaches seems impossible. The question is whether “non-secure detention facilities” (so named by statute, Executive Law §§ 503, 504) are detention facilities—a question that answers itself. The obvious conclusion is reinforced by the statutory definition of “detention facility”: “any place used for the confinement, pursuant to an order of a court, of a person . . . charged with being . . . a . . . juvenile delinquent” (Penal Law § 205.00 [1] [b]). Dylan C. was charged with being a juvenile delinquent and remanded by order of the Family Court to the Catholic Guardian Non-Secure Detention Center. Any argument that the facility was not used for his “confinement” must deal with the awkward fact that, when Dylan walked out the door, a facility employee chased him and brought him back. Indeed, the relevant statutes fit the facts here so well that the majority, to avoid calling Dylan’s act an “escape”—the act with which he is charged—uses instead the word “elopement” (majority op at 616), which usually refers to a more romantic event.
Acknowledging that the “literal” words of the statute do not support its holding (majority op at 616), the majority finds justification for disregarding those words in People v Ortega (69 NY2d 763, 764 [1987]), which does indeed say: “a nonsecure facility does not constitute a detention facility.” Ortega dealt with a psychiatric facility, not one for the detention of juvenile offenders. The words “non-secure detention facility” do not appear in Ortega. It is not apparent that we were aware, when we wrote our memorandum decision in Ortega—devoting only two sentences to the question of what “detention facility” means—that such a thing as a “non-secure detention facility” existed.
The majority makes a reasonable argument that a mentally ill adult, like the Ortega defendant, who flees from confinement is probably not less dangerous than a fleeing juvenile offender like Dylan. I would not, however, extend the Ortega decision to the limits of its logic. I would confine Ortega to its facts, and apply to this case the statutes as they are written.
*620Judges Ciparick, Graffeo and Jones concur with Chief Judge Lippman; Judge Smith dissents and votes to reverse in a separate opinion in which Judges Read and Pigott concur.
Order affirmed, without costs.