Stats & Case Summaries - Fourth Department Decisions (June Term)

Click here for criminal case stats and summaries

·        People v Beasley (KA 10-00548) – Lower court failed to set forth on the record its determination denying D’s request for youthful offender treatment.  4AD thus vacated sentenced and remitted to County Court for re-sentencing after a determination whether D should be sentenced as a youthful offender.

·        People v Carey (KA 10-02153) – D claimed the lower court erred by failing to order a pre-sentence report before D was sentence on a violation of probation.  4AD noted that this contention was not preserved but, in any event, the declaration of delinquency and uniform court report “constituted the functional equivalent of an updated [presentence] report.”  Also, the same judge presided over the original and revocation proceedings and was therefore familiar with the change in circumstances since the original proceedings.

·        People v Hildreth (KA 11-00081) – D argued that his conviction of eavesdropping under Penal Law § 250.05 was not established by legally sufficient evidence.  4AD noted that this contention was not preserved but decided that it did not have merit.  D argued that there was no evidence that he “accessed” or “intercepted” an electronic communication.  4AD stated that just because no witness testified that information was recorded by the program that D installed on the victim’s computer did not render the evidence legally insufficient.  There was circumstantial evidence that the computer program was installed on the victim’s computer, that it was configured to record certain communications and send a report regarding those communications, and that it attempted to send such a report.  4AD explained that even in circumstantial evidence cases, the standard of appellate review is whether “any valid line of reasoning and permissible inferences could lead a rational person to the conclusion reached by the factfinder on the basis of the evidence at trial, viewed in the light most favorable to the People.”  Here, there was such a line.

·        People v McEathron (KA 09-02332) – D’s conviction of second degree kidnapping did not violate the merger doctrine.  That doctrine prohibits a conviction for kidnapping based on acts that fall within the definition of that crime but are merely incidental to another crime.  Here, 4AD explained that the guiding principle was whether D’s restraint of the victim was “so much the part of another substantive crime that the substantive crime could not have been committed without such acts and that independent criminal responsibility may not fairly be attributed to them.”  Here, the kidnapping was not simultaneous and inseparable from the assault.  D restrained and began transporting the victim for undisclosed reasons and the assault was incidental to the kidnapping.