Court Filings

The Appellate Division, Third Department affirmed County Court's denial of defendant Duane MM.'s 2022 application for resentencing under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA). Defendant, convicted in 1996 of two counts of second-degree murder and other property offenses for killings committed when he was 16, argued his history of sexual abuse by his father significantly contributed to the crimes and that his original sentence was unduly harsh. The court found the expert testimony lacked sufficient contact with or records about defendant and offered no nexus to one murder, and defendant's own statement did not tie the abuse to his actions. Because defendant did not prove the required DVSJA factors by a preponderance of the evidence, resentencing was properly denied.

The Court of Appeals held that a defendant may not be required, as a condition of a negotiated guilty plea, to waive a Penal Law § 60.12 hearing under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA). N.H. accepted a plea conditioned on waiving a § 60.12 hearing; the Court concluded such a waiver is not enforceable and reversed the Appellate Division, remitting the case to Supreme Court for further proceedings. The majority emphasized the DVSJA’s remedial purpose to afford survivor-defendants a judicial opportunity to establish eligibility for alternative, less severe sentences and treated the hearing right as unwaivable in plea bargaining.

The Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Term, vacated Warren Burgess's guilty plea to misdemeanor criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree, and remitted the case to Criminal Court for further proceedings. Burgess had pleaded to a misdemeanor after felony counts were crossed out at arraignment, but the accusatory instrument lacked any factual allegation that the recovered firearm was operable — an element required to sustain the weapon possession charge. Because a facially sufficient accusatory instrument is a jurisdictional prerequisite that survives a guilty plea, the Court concluded the misdemeanor information was jurisdictionally defective and could not support the plea.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed a Supreme Court order dismissing two counts of a grand jury indictment against defendant Rony Zino. The charges—criminally negligent homicide and reckless driving—arose from an October 11, 2023 vehicle-pedestrian accident that resulted in the pedestrian's death. The court held the grand jury evidence, even viewed in the People’s favor, did not provide the prima facie proof required for those crimes because it failed to show the defendant engaged in the degree of blameworthy conduct or reckless disregard of consequences necessary for conviction.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed a Supreme Court order designating Benjamin Williams a level two sex offender under New York's Sex Offender Registration Act. Williams pleaded guilty to possessing child sexual performance material; after a SORA hearing the court scored him 80 points on the risk instrument, denied his request for a downward departure from the presumptive risk level, and imposed the level two designation. The appellate court held the trial court properly exercised its discretion because the quantity, nature, duration of viewing, and sharing of images supported the assessed risk, and other claimed mitigating factors were either unpreserved or already accounted for by the Guidelines.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed defendant Troy Williams's conviction for first-degree manslaughter after a jury trial but reduced his sentence in the interest of justice. The court found the guilty verdict was not against the weight of the evidence, denied claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, and held a claim that the People withheld Brady material must be raised in a CPL 440.10 motion because the supporting facts are dehors the record. Exercising its discretion, the court reduced the prison term from 15 years to 8 years (postrelease supervision unchanged) and otherwise affirmed the judgment.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the County Court judgment convicting Brian Whittaker, who pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a firearm and was sentenced. The court held Whittaker validly, knowingly, and voluntarily waived his appellate rights and his written waiver of prosecution by indictment was valid. Although he argued the plea allocution was factually insufficient and thus involuntary, that claim was unpreserved and without merit because the allocution demonstrated he understood the charges and knowingly entered the plea.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed two County Court judgments that convicted Orlando Ramsay on multiple drug- and weapon-related charges after he pleaded guilty. Ramsay argued his pleas were not knowing, voluntary, and intelligent and raised ineffective-assistance claims, but the court found those claims unpreserved because he never moved to withdraw his pleas or raised the issue below. The court also held his plea allocution did not cast significant doubt on guilt, and the record independently shows the pleas were valid. Any ineffective-assistance claims not directly related to plea negotiations or sentencing were forfeited by the guilty pleas.

The Appellate Division, Second Department, affirmed the judgment adjudicating the defendant a youthful offender following his guilty plea to attempted second-degree robbery, but modified the judgment by vacating the mandatory surcharge and crime victim assistance fee. The court concluded those monetary assessments must be set aside because recent legislative amendments (and subsequent state appellate authority) apply retroactively to youthful-offender dispositions and repeal mandatory surcharges and victim assistance fees for youthful offenders. All other aspects of the judgment, including the youthful offender adjudication and sentence, were left intact.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the County Court's denial without a hearing of Valery Latouche's 2024 CPL 440.47 motion to vacate his sentences and be resentenced under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (Penal Law § 60.12). The court held Latouche failed to submit the required corroborating evidence—at least two pieces, one of which must be a specified form of record—showing he was subjected to substantial domestic abuse at the time of the offenses and that such abuse significantly contributed to his criminal behavior. The panel modified the order to state the denial was without prejudice.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the conviction and sentence of defendant Christopher Iregui. Iregui pleaded guilty in Queens County Supreme Court to attempted burglary in the second degree and was sentenced on July 24, 2023. On appeal he challenged the judgment and the severity of his sentence, but the appellate court found the sentence was not excessive and therefore upheld the conviction and sentence without further modification.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the defendant's convictions for second- and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and the resulting sentence. The court reviewed the denial of the defendant’s suppression motion and found the officers observed the defendant with a gun before pursuing or seizing him, giving them reasonable suspicion and then probable cause. The court also held the defendant abandoned the gun by throwing it beneath a tree, so he lacked standing to challenge its seizure. Claims of incredible police testimony, ineffective assistance, and prosecutorial misconduct were either unpreserved or without merit.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the defendant's 2019 conviction for criminal possession of a firearm following a guilty plea. The court reviewed the denial, without a hearing, of the defendant's omnibus motion to suppress physical evidence recovered during a traffic stop. The court found the defendant's written waiver of the right to appeal invalid but held that the suppression motion was properly denied without a hearing because the supporting papers were conclusory and did not allege sufficient facts to require a hearing. Unpreserved constitutional challenges to the gun statute were not considered.

The Appellate Division, Second Department, affirmed the defendant's conviction for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon following a guilty plea and sentence. The defendant had challenged the search warrant and sought disclosure of an unredacted warrant application and hearing minutes to attack probable cause and the confidential informant's anonymity. The court upheld the trial court's redactions as necessary to protect the informant and, after reviewing the unredacted materials, concluded there was probable cause for the warrant and properly denied suppression of the recovered firearms.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed a Kings County Supreme Court judgment that adjudicated the defendant a youthful offender after a guilty plea to criminal possession of a firearm and imposed sentence. The defendant argued the conviction was unconstitutional, but the court held those constitutional challenges were not preserved because they were not raised below and declined to address them in the interest of justice. Because the court resolved preservation, it did not reach the defendant's remaining arguments.

The Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the defendant's conviction for second-degree criminal contempt following his guilty plea and sentence. The defendant appealed, and his assigned counsel submitted an Anders brief seeking permission to withdraw for lack of nonfrivolous issues. After conducting an independent review of the record, the court agreed there were no meritorious appellate issues and granted counsel's motion to withdraw, affirming the judgment of conviction.

The Appellate Division, Second Department, affirmed defendant Michael Barnett's conviction for petit larceny entered on his guilty plea, but modified the judgment by vacating the mandatory surcharge and fees that had been imposed at sentencing. The court relied on Criminal Procedure Law § 420.35(2-a) and recent Appellate Division decisions allowing waiver of such financial penalties for defendants who were under 21 at the time of the offense. The People consented to the modification, and the court exercised its interest-of-justice jurisdiction to relieve Barnett of the surcharge and fees while leaving the conviction and sentence otherwise intact.

The Appellate Division, First Department affirmed defendant Anzar Thompson's conviction and two-year sentence for attempted second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Thompson challenged the stop-and-frisk as unsupported by reasonable suspicion based on a 911 caller's information; the court held the claim was unpreserved and declined review in the interest of justice, but alternatively rejected the challenge on the merits. The court found the 911 tip reliable because it included identifying details (partial name and callback number), a detailed description and location, and accurate vehicle information corroborated by the officer's observations, which together supplied reasonable suspicion to stop and frisk.

The Appellate Division, First Department, affirmed the judgment of the New York County Supreme Court in People v. Imbert. The appeals challenged a criminal conviction and sentence imposed on March 28, 2023. After briefing and oral argument, the appellate panel reviewed the record, considered counsel's arguments, and concluded the sentence was not excessive. The court therefore upheld the trial court's judgment and denied relief to the defendant, issuing a short unanimous order affirming the judgment on April 21, 2026.

The Appellate Division, First Department affirmed defendant Victor Jimenez Cespedes's conviction and eight-year sentence for criminal sale of a controlled substance in the first degree. The court reviewed the jury verdict and found it was not against the weight of the evidence, crediting the jury's credibility determinations. Key facts supporting conviction were that defendant entered an undercover officer's car carrying a box containing over 6,000 fentanyl pills, acted as the courier in a negotiated $25,000 transaction, and admitted he would receive $2,000. The court held these facts supported an inference that he knew the box's contents and rejected his testimonial denial.

The Court of Appeals held that the three-year delay between the third and fourth trials of Travis Woods violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial and ordered dismissal of the murder and weapon-possession charges. The court found the prosecution offered only vague, unsubstantiated reasons for the long delay—internal meetings, reassignment, and reinvestigation—insufficient to justify more than three years of inaction during which a key eyewitness died. The court affirmed Woods's earlier drug convictions, rejecting his claim that lack of notice about two jury notes required reversal because the jury later sent the same request and counsel participated in the readback.

The Court of Appeals held that defendant's written speedy-trial motion under CPL 30.30(1)(b), filed on the day trial was to begin, was timely and provided reasonable notice to the People. The Appellate Division erred in affirming the trial court's summary refusal to consider the motion as untimely and for lack of notice. Because the motion complied with the specific statutory deadline in CPL 170.30(2) and included detailed calculations of chargeable days, the Court reversed and remitted the case for further proceedings on the motion so the People may be given a fair opportunity to respond and the trial court may exercise its discretion how to proceed.

The Appellate Division, Third Department affirmed defendant Robert F. Whitbeck Jr.'s convictions for multiple sexual and related offenses after a jury trial. Whitbeck was convicted of third-degree rape, first-degree criminal sexual act, first-degree attempted rape, criminal obstruction of breathing, second-degree unlawful imprisonment, and criminal contempt, and sentenced to aggregate prison terms and postrelease supervision. The court held the guilty verdicts were not against the weight of the evidence, deferring to the jury's credibility findings given the victim's testimony, corroborating observations by the victim's daughter, and defendant's text messages that included apparent admissions. Claims of trial error and ineffective assistance were rejected as either unpreserved or unsupported by the record.

The Appellate Division, Third Department affirmed defendant Nsikak K. Okure’s conviction and sentence after he pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an incident without reporting. Okure entered a plea agreement specifying concurrent prison terms (no less than 7–21 to no more than 8–24 years for the homicide count and 2⅓–7 years concurrent for leaving the scene) and waived his right to appeal. The court rejected his sole claim—that the within-agreement sentence was harsh—holding that his valid, unchallenged appeal waiver bars review of that challenge.

The Appellate Division, Third Department affirmed defendant David Host’s conviction and 25-years-to-life sentence after he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for a break-in that resulted in two deaths. Host had waived appeal rights, but the court considered his preserved claim that the plea was involuntary. The court found his claim unpreserved because he did not make a postallocution motion and that no statements during the plea proceeding raised significant doubt about voluntariness. Even on the record, the court concluded mental-health history did not undermine the plea, and the appellate waiver bars a challenge to sentence severity.

The Appellate Division, Third Department affirmed defendant Jonathan Guerin’s 2019 convictions and prison sentence following his guilty plea to multiple driving-related offenses arising from an April 2018 incident. The court held that challenges to the voluntariness of the plea and to counsel’s effectiveness were unpreserved because defendant did not move to withdraw his plea after allocution, and no statements during the plea colloquy triggered the narrow exception to preservation. The court also found the excessiveness claim moot because defendant has reached his sentence's maximum expiration and is incarcerated on a separate conviction.

The Appellate Division, Third Department affirmed County Court's denial of defendant Alex M. Ferrer's CPL 440.10 motion to vacate his burglary convictions. Ferrer argued trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to his being fitted with a concealed stun cuff and the presence of SERT officers during trial. After a hearing County Court credited trial counsel's testimony that he was not informed of the device and found counsel's strategy reasonable because the cuff was not visible, alternatives would have been more obvious restraints, and Ferrer was not chilled from testifying. The appellate court deferred to those credibility findings and affirmed.

The Appellate Division, Third Department affirmed Amanda C. Diaz's convictions for aggravated driving while intoxicated with a child passenger, driving while intoxicated, and endangering the welfare of a child. The court reviewed a weight-of-the-evidence challenge and rejected it, finding the jury reasonably credited testimony from two off-duty paramedics and state troopers who observed disorientation, failed field sobriety testing, and admissions of alcohol use over the defendant's sister's contrary testimony. The court also held that a hearsay statement from the child, elicited at trial, was cured by prompt curative instructions and was harmless given the other evidence of guilt.

The Appellate Division, Third Department affirmed a conviction and sentence entered after defendant Abdallah A. Aboueida waived indictment and pleaded guilty to attempted third-degree burglary under a superior court information. County Court imposed the agreed-upon sentence of five years probation. On appeal the defendant argued the sentence was unduly harsh, but the appellate court rejected that challenge as barred by the unchallenged waiver of the right to appeal contained in the plea agreement, and therefore affirmed the judgment.

The Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division and granted the defendant's motion to suppress a statement obtained after his arrest. The People relied on an NYPD "probable cause I-card" and the fellow officer rule to justify the arrest, but presented no testimony from the arresting officers and did not show the I-card's contents or that the arresting officers actually received or relied on it. Because the prosecution failed to prove that the officers who arrested the defendant had been communicated probable cause, the court held the arrest unlawful and suppressed the statement as its fruit, remitting the case for further proceedings.