Court Opinion

ID: 9744304
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:59:42.083523+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:48.332978
License: Public Domain

Rosenblatt, J. (dissenting in part).
Respectfully, I dissent from so much of the Court’s decision as upholds the denial of defendant’s CPL 440.10 (1) (g) motion without a hearing. On the record before us, the possibility of defendant’s actual innocence is too high to justify denial of the CPL 440.10 motion without a hearing. The majority determined that the case is legally sufficient, and no one can quarrel with that. My discomfort stems from the combined effect of two rulings: the first, denying the introduction at trial of Guilfoyle’s photograph; and the second, summarily denying defendant’s posttrial motion after the primary victim, Ruiz (who at trial said defendant was not the robber), submitted an affidavit stating that she is 90% certain that the person in the photograph—Guilfoyle—was the robber. Coming on the heels of a borderline ruling disallowing Guilfoyle’s photograph at trial, the affidavit is too potent to be cast aside.
I’ll elaborate.
(1) As between Ruiz and Velasquez, Ruiz is the more important witness. She was the one whom the robber held at knife-*532point. Velasquez did not testify that he saw the actual crime; he did not see it. He said he saw defendant in the restaurant. I do not discount his testimony or his identification of the car. It is important evidence and inferential enough to give the prosecution a legally sufficient case, but it is not as compelling as Ruiz’s testimony combined with her posttrial affidavit.
(2) The majority states that defendant was arrested based on the descriptions of both Velasquez and Ruiz. On the record before us, however, we do not know how it came about that police suspicion settled on defendant. At oral argument, the People told us they did not know.
(3) The majority points out that Guilfoyle robbed two or three establishments before and two or three after the robbery in question. This characterization is accurate, but it does not emphasize, as I think it should, the extraordinary proximity in time and place of Guilfoyle’s crimes compared with the El Classico robbery. Guilfoyle’s arrest reports reveal that he was charged with a robbery the same night as the El Classico robbery, roughly three hours before the El Classico crime and only 10-12 miles away. Guilfoyle’s other robberies occurred on January 27, 1999, at a small business fewer than three miles away from El Classico; then again, later in the evening on January 27, at another small business roughly five miles away from El Classico; again on February 1, at a small business 8-10 miles away; on February 5, at 5:45 p.m. roughly five miles from El Classico; and finally, on March 7, at another small business about five miles away.
There was also Guilfoyle’s modus operand!: in each instance, he took money from the cash register of a small business by intimidating the worker and sometimes pretending to have a gun. The El Classico robber’s method seems similar enough to Guilfoyle’s technique that the connection should have been explored. I cannot agree with the majority that Guilfoyle’s robberies were marked by “remoteness” from the one involved here.
Affirming both the conviction and the CPL 440.10 denial is disquieting, but not because Primo (People v Primo, 96 NY2d 351, 356 [2001]) created a rule that, if applied to a pre-Primo case, would call for a different result. Primo articulates a better test than the earlier “clear link” standard because it is less mechanical and allows the court, in a conventional way, to balance probative value against prejudice. The problem here would be much the same had Primo never been decided. Primo *533implicitly recognized that a trial, if not properly constrained, could become skewed and the prosecution put to the impossible burden of having to disprove the guilt of everyone who, in a photograph, looks like the accused.
If that were allowed, a criminal case could deteriorate into a chaotic series of minitrials, one per photograph, given the ease with which defendants can find pictures of felons who resemble them (at least the ordinary defendant can, even if not this one). Primo should not be read as having opened that door. On the contrary, most judges, I suspect, had instinctively applied a Primo prejudice/probative value test without calling it that. We just gave it a better name, reminding judges that discretion is antithetical to rigidity and some rulings call for more elasticity than others.
This is all worth mentioning because of what happened at the trial. In refusing to let the jury see Guilfoyle’s photograph, the court did not rule it prejudicial or valueless. Rather, the court considered whether a proper foundation had been proffered, which was the prosecution’s only objection, and ruled that the photograph’s connection to the case was too tenuous. It was a very close call.
In trying to get Guilfoyle’s photograph into evidence, the defense pointed out that it could establish a foundation by testimony from the detectives who had worked on the Guilfoyle cases. The defense argued that the detectives’ description would confirm that Guilfoyle’s method of operation matched the El Classico crime. In response to the prosecution’s challenge that Guilfoyle’s appearance may have changed since the date of the photograph, the defense explained that the police officers would be able to describe any differences between the photograph and Guilfoyle’s contemporary appearance. It was only after the defense had rebuffed the prosecution’s foundation objection that the trial court, on its own, began wondering aloud whether a sufficient link existed between the photograph and the crime. The trial court based its ruling on the proper conclusion that a mere similarity of appearance would not suffice to make the photograph admissible. The court rejected the defense’s protestations that the close proximity in time and place, coupled with the similarity of method, of Guilfoyle’s crimes made the admissibility of the photograph rest on a good deal more than mere physical resemblance.
Had the court allowed the jury to see the photograph, no one could have justly criticized the ruling on “foundation” grounds *534or as an exercise of discretion. But excluding Guilfoyle’s photograph was within the court’s discretion, and if that were all there was before us I would close the book on this case.
It’s what happened afterward that’s unsettling. By submitting a posttrial affidavit identifying Guilfoyle, Ruiz has, in hindsight, shaken the court’s ruling barring the photograph. Her affidavit does not make the ruling wrong, or reversible, because we do not use hindsight to overturn trial judges’ determinations. For that reason, I agree with the Court that reversal of the conviction is not now warranted.
The CPL 440.10 motion, however, should not have been denied without a hearing, and in my view it was an abuse of discretion to, in effect, reject the Ruiz affidavit out of hand. Rather than affirming the denied of a hearing, this Court should remand so that Ruiz can be called before the court, under oath, to give her a chance to see Guilfoyle under court-arranged auspices. The court could then determine whether the conviction was a miscarriage of justice. As a dissenter, of course, I cannot make this happen. It would seem to me, though, that there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained if this chapter were fulfilled. The Guilfoyle photograph is too blurry to justify any kind of certainty. After seeing Guilfoyle in person, however, Ruiz may conclude that he is not the robber. If so, the case is over and justice is served. But if Ruiz insists that Guilfoyle is the man who robbed her, I should think that any right-minded prosecutor would want to know of it. Given the affirmance, the prosecutor’s alternative is to do nothing and never put Ruiz to a test before the wise and experienced judge who heard this case.
. Given her affidavit, Ruiz’s testimony at a CPL 440.10 hearing would necessarily produce an additional measure of truth. Prosecutorial inaction would be lawful, but regrettable. The interests of finality count for a great deal, and may be alluring, but they are not always consistent with the higher ends of justice.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo, Read and R.S. Smith concur with Judge G.B. Smith; Judge Rosenblatt dissents in part in a separate opinion.
Order affirmed.