Court Opinion

ID: 9723716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:28:42.707162+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:18.171888
License: Public Domain

Graffeo, J. (concurring).
I would affirm the order of the Appellate Division because I conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the introduction of evidence by both parties in this case.
After defendant was arrested and charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting three people, his attorney prepared a notice of alibi pursuant to CPL 250.201 indicating that defendant was attending a birthday party at the time and date *470of the shootings. During the trial, defendant’s new counsel advised the People not to rely on the notice of alibi. Counsel claimed that the notice of alibi had been composed by his predecessor under the mistaken belief that the crime occurred at the same time as the party defendant purportedly attended when, in fact, the crime occurred approximately 18 hours earlier.
A revised alibi defense was introduced at trial when defense counsel called defendant’s girlfriend to testify. She told the jury that defendant had been present at her home on the night in question. At this point, the prosecutor asserted that defendant had violated CPL 250.20 by presenting an alibi witness who was not identified in the notice of alibi.2
Although the prosecutor appropriately cited CPL 250.20, he apparently determined that it would be advantageous to impeach the new alibi evidence with the information stated in the prior notice. The prosecutor therefore did not seek to strike or preclude the testimony of defendant’s girlfriend, and did not attempt to introduce the notice of alibi during his cross-examination of the girlfriend or otherwise question her about how her recollection contradicted the notice of alibi. Nor did the People use the alibi notice to undermine the new defense during the testimony of the girlfriend’s mother, who stated she was also present in the home with defendant on the night of the shootings. Instead, the prosecutor used the notice of alibi in an attempt to refresh the mother’s recollection, without revealing the nature or contents of the document to the jury.
It was only after all of the defense witnesses testified that the prosecutor sought to introduce the alibi notice into evidence as part of the People’s rebuttal case for the purpose of impeaching the alibi evidence. Although defense counsel objected to the admission of the notice in evidence, the court ultimately allowed the People to use the notice of alibi but, to stem the possibility of unwarranted prejudice to defendant, instructed the jury that the notice was introduced for the sole purpose of *471impeaching the alibi defense and not as direct evidence of defendant’s guilt.3
The question now presented is whether the trial court abused its discretion in determining that defendant should be permitted to offer new alibi evidence, despite his violation of CPL 250.20, while also allowing the People to address the discrepancy between defendant’s notice of alibi and the alibi testimony by introducing the written notice into evidence. The majority concludes that the trial court erred in admitting the notice of alibi as evidence in rebuttal to the new defense. I disagree.
First, the argument the majority adopts—that impeachment with the notice of alibi was prohibited by CPL 250.20—was not made to the trial judge. Instead, defense counsel indicated to the court that it was “discretionary, that the document be allowed in.” Thus, the majority’s position—that trial courts do not have such discretion—is not properly before us.
Second, the statute clearly authorizes a trial court to consider alternatives that further the truth-seeking function of the trial. CPL 250.20 (3) states that a court “may exclude” the testimony of an unnoticed alibi witness (emphasis added) and it “may” alternatively allow unnoticed alibi evidence to be presented to the jury after affording the People a reasonable adjournment to investigate the defense. The permissive nature of the statute indicates that the Legislature intended to provide a trial judge with appropriate latitude in deciding the extent of sanctions or how to otherwise address a request to introduce an eleventh-hour alibi. Even if the statute’s language does not allow for such a permissive interpretation, I believe, as addressed below, such an interpretation is required by the Constitution.
Nor is the majority’s analysis compelled by our recent decision in People v Burgos-Santos (98 NY2d 226 [2002]). We recognized that a notice of alibi cannot be used as an “informal judicial admission” to impeach the accused if the notice (1) is withdrawn before trial and (2) the defendant “elect[s] not to present an alibi defense at trial” (id. at 232, 235). The rationale *472underlying this principle is straightforward—if a defendant chooses not to present an alibi defense, no violation of CPL 250.20 occurs; the notice, therefore, is neither material nor relevant to any issue in the case because there is nothing to impeach and any question concerning the defendant’s compliance with statutory obligations is academic.
But defendant in this case stands before us in an admittedly different posture than the defendant in Burgos-Santos. Here, defendant chose to present an alibi defense that conflicted with the information he provided to the People. He injected a new alibi into the case and failed to withdraw the previous notice. Thus, unlike the Burgos-Santos scenario, in this case we have a clear violation of CPL 250.20 that rendered the credibility of the alibi defense a material issue.4
The inadmissibility of the notice of alibi in Burgos-Santos was premised on two considerations that are not present in this case: that impeachment using a withdrawn notice against a defendant who does not assert an alibi defense at trial will “undermine the truth-seeking function that notice of alibi statutes were designed to foster” by “inhibit [ing] a defendant from abandoning a factually inaccurate defense posture” {id. at 235); and that the use of a withdrawn notice could “potentially implicate[ ] Fifth Amendment and due process concerns” {id. at 234) by locking a defendant into a particular defense at an early stage in the criminal justice process. In the case before us, the People’s use of the notice of alibi certainly did not inhibit defendant from abandoning the alibi he initially claimed. To the contrary, defendant, knowing that the notice allegedly was factually inaccurate and notwithstanding the possibility of preclusion under CPL 250.20, presented a contradictory explanation of his whereabouts. Because defendant was not “fixed” to the alibi he earlier noticed {id.), and to the extent any prejudice to him was caused by his failure to timely withdraw the notice, this case does not give rise to the Fifth Amendment implications that informed the result in Burgos-Santos.
In my view, the majority’s application of CPL 250.20 may unduly restrict an accused’s right to present a defense and *473therefore stands on dubious constitutional footing in light of an accused’s Sixth Amendment rights. In a case such as this, where defendant first asserted his new alibi defense approximately 2V2 years after the crime and relied on testimony by his girlfriend and her mother, providing the People with a short adjournment to investigate defendant’s new claims may well have been useless, leaving preclusion of all alibi testimony as the only remedy available under the majority’s rule. Although the Federal Constitution does not prohibit preclusion of defense evidence as a sanction or remedy for the violation of a discovery rule (see Taylor v Illinois, 484 US 400 [1988]), the United States Supreme Court has characterized preclusion as a “severe sanction” that “unquestionably implicates the Sixth Amendment” (Michigan v Lucas, 500 US 145, 153, 149 [1991]). The Supreme Court has, in fact, rejected the notion that “the imposition of a discovery sanction that entirely excludes the testimony of a material defense witness” will never offend the Sixth Amendment (Taylor v Illinois, 484 US at 409). The concept that emerges from this precedent is that, depending on the situation, preclusion of defense evidence may be justified, but in most cases lesser, “alternative sanctions would be ‘adequate and appropriate’ ” (Michigan v Lucas, 500 US at 152, quoting Taylor v Illinois, 484 US at 413). Under the circumstances of this case, the preclusion of all alibi testimony would have prejudiced the rights of defendant.
In fact, this case highlights the constitutional difficulties inherent in the rule announced today. According to the majority, the People would have been entitled to preclusion of all alibi evidence offered by defendant, even though there was, as the majority recognizes, “a plausible basis for abandoning the notice, with no claim of bad faith or prejudice to the prosecution” (majority op at 467-468). Defense counsel explained that the discrepancy between the alibi notice prepared before trial and the alibi presented at trial was attributable to a mistake by defendant’s former counsel, who apparently believed that the shootings occurred at the same time as the party when, as later discovered, the party began later in the evening on the day of the shootings. If the trial court had precluded the alibi evidence, defendant would have been left with no viable defense to explain his whereabouts at the time of the crime. Rather than imposing such a severe and prejudicial hardship on defendant, the trial court charted a more balanced course, allowing both parties to *474present their version of the evidence as to defendant’s whereabouts at the time of the crime. On this record, it cannot be said that the court abused its discretion by failing to impose on defendant the most extreme sanction allowed by law, especially when that remedy was never requested by the People.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges G.B. Smith and Ciparick concur with Judge Rosenblatt; Judge Graffeo concurs in result in a separate opinion in which Judges Read and R.S. Smith concur.
Order affirmed.

. The statute provides that, upon demand by the People, the defendant must serve “a ‘notice of alibi,’ reciting (a) the place or places where the defendant claims to have been at the time in question, and (b) the names, the residential addresses, the places of employment and the addresses thereof of every *470such alibi witness upon whom [the defendant] intends to rely.” (CPL 250.20 [II.)

. CPL 250.20 (3) states: “If at the trial the defendant calls such an alibi witness without having served the demanded notice of alibi, or if having served such a notice he calls a witness not specified therein, the court may exclude any testimony of such witness relating to the alibi defense. The court may in its discretion receive such testimony, but before doing so, it must, upon application of the people, grant an adjournment not in excess of three days.”

. In light of the court’s limiting instruction, it is inaccurate to claim that the People were permitted “to use the notice affirmatively as evidence of guilt” (majority op at 468; see id. at 467, 467-468). The jury was told that the notice was “to be considered by you as to whether the People have or have not disproved the defense of alibi. . . . It’s not to be considered by you in the ultimate issue of guilt or innocence, only to be considered by whether the People have or have not proven the defendant’s position of alibi. And that’s the only purpose for that exhibit to be admitted.”

. The majority’s concern that “a defendant who serves an alibi notice relying on a particular witness would risk the introduction of the notice if, for some reason, the witness becomes unavailable” (majority op at 468) is unwarranted. Unlike this case, a defendant in that situation presumably would not be presenting a new, unnoticed alibi defense in violation of CPL 250.20. I agree that, in such a situation, introduction of the notice into evidence most likely would be inappropriate, just as it was in Burgos-Santos.