Kenny v. Loos

286 A.D. 97, 140 N.Y.S.2d 817, 1955 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3984
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedMay 11, 1955
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 286 A.D. 97 (Kenny v. Loos) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kenny v. Loos, 286 A.D. 97, 140 N.Y.S.2d 817, 1955 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3984 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1955).

Opinion

Halpern, J.

This is an appeal from an order of the Special Term dismissing the petitioner’s application under article 78 of the Civil Practice Act for an order annulling the determination by the Board of Parole requiring the petitioner to serve the remainder of an unexpired sentence, pursuant to section 219 of the Correction Lpy.

[99]*99The petitioner was sentenced on November 8, 1945, upon his plea of guilty to the crime of robbery, second degree, to imprisonment for an indeterminate term, the minimum of which was four years and the maximum of which was fifteen years. The petitioner was then eighteen years of age. Pursuant to the mandate of article 3-A of the Correction Law (§§ 60-64), he was committed to the Elmira Reception Center for classification and confinement in accordance with that article. Subsequently, he was transferred to Elmira Reformatory and was confined there for a period of two years and eight months, after which he was released on parole.

"While on parole, the petitioner committed the crime of attempted robbery in the third degree and, upon his plea of guilty to a charge of that offense, he was sentenced on October 26,1948, to Sing Sing prison. The Board of Parole notified the petitioner in November, 1948, that he would be compelled to serve a period of ten months of his first sentence before commencing service of his second sentence but subsequently, in July, 1949, the Board notified the petitioner that it had rescinded this determination and that he would be required to serve the whole of the unexpired balance of the maximum of his first sentence, pursuant to section 219 of the Correction Law, before commencing service of Ms second sentence.

The petitioner brought this proceeding to review the validity of the Parole Board’s determination in January, 1954. The court below dismissed the proceeding upon the ground that more than two years had elapsed after the making of the determination sought to be reviewed (Civ. Prac. Act, § 1286). We do not believe that, in the situation here presented, the two-year statute bars the proceeding. The confinement of the petitioner under the Parole Board’s determination was a continuing one and, correspondingly, the Parole Board was under a continuing duty to determine correctly the duration of the prisoner’s confinement in accordance with the applicable statutes. (Matter of Cash v. Bates, 301 N. Y. 258, 261; Matter of De Luca v. Gaffney, 282 App. Div. 607, 611; cf. Post v. Lyford, 285 App. Div. 101.) Neither can it be said that the application was barred because of laches, in the absence of a showing of prejudice by reason of the delay (People ex rel. Ehrlich v. Grant, 61 App. Div. 238). We accordingly pass to the merits of the application.

Section 219 of the Correction Law, relied upon by the Parole Board, provides that, if any prisoner commits a felony while on parole from a state prison he shall, in addition to the sentence which may be imposed for such felony, and before begin[100]*100ning to serve such sentence, be compelled to serve in state’s prison the portion remaining of the maximum term of the sentence on which he was released on parole from the time of such release on parole until the expiration of such maximum ”.

The petitioner focuses attention upon the phrase ‘ ‘ while on parole from a state prison ” and he argues that, since he was not on parole from a State prison, section 219 does not apply to him. This argument is superficially a persuasive one but, in order to understand the nature of the problem, it is necessary to look beyond these words in section 219 to the statutory plan of which the section is a part.

Under article 3-A of the Correction Law, male offenders between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one years who are convicted of offenses punishable by imprisonment in State institutions under the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction, and who are sentenced to imprisonment, must be sentenced “ without designating the name of such institution ” and must be “ committed to the department reception center for classification and confinement ”, (§ 61, subd. 1.) However, the court having jurisdiction to pronounce sentence may nevertheless “ fix the term of imprisonment ’ ’; the court may either sentence the prisoner to an indeterminate sentence with a maximum and a minimum or it may sentence him “ for an indefinite term governed as to length ’ ’ by the provisions of article 12 regulating the term of imprisonment in Elmira Reformatory (Correction Law, § 61, subd. 2). As this has been rephrased in the new section 64, added by chapter 803 of the Laws of 1954, the court may sentence the offender either “ to an indeterminate sentence, or to a reformatory term ”. An indeterminate sentence is commonly referred to as a State prison sentence. It is defined as ‘ ‘ A sentence to imprisonment in a state prison having minimum and maximum limits fixed by the court or the governor ” (Correction Law, § 230, subd. 1). See, also, section 2189 of the Penal Law governing “ Indeterminate sentences to state prisons ”, A reformatory term is a term of indefinite length which may be terminated by the Board of Parole at any time but which is not, in any event, to run more than five years (Penal Law, § 2184-a, as amd. by L, 1954, ch. 803; Correction Law, § 288, as amd. by L. 1945, ch, 678),

When the Governor’s Interdepartmental Committee on Delinquency recommended the setting up of the Elmira Reception Center in 1945, it recommended that all sentences to the Center “ should be entirely indeterminate, at least for first offenders ” (1945 Interim Report, Part II, State’s Role in Treating Delin[101]*101quency, p. 35). By the phrase “ entirely indeterminate ”, the committee meant a sentence of indefinite length governed by the statutes regulating imprisonment in reformatories, without any minimum or maximum set by the court (p. 42).

The Legislature did not adopt this portion of the committee’s recommendation. It reserved to the court the power to fix a minimum and maximum for the term of imprisonment (Correction Law, § 61, subd. b; § 63). The Legislature thus, in effect, authorized the court to impose a State prison type of sentence upon an offender committed to the Elmira Beception Center. If such an offender were subsequently transferred to the Elmira Beformatory, the anomalous situation would be created that the prisoner would be confined in a reformatory but would be subject to a State prison sentence. This was expressly provided for in section 63 of the Correction Law as added by chapter 554 of the Laws of 1945: 6 ‘ The confinement of any offender shall be governed by laws applicable to the institution to which he is certified for confinement, but his parole and discharge shall be governed by the laws applicable to the sentence imposed by the court.”

This situation could not ordinarily have arisen prior to 1945 when the Elmira Beception Center was set up. Offenders between the ages of sixteen and thirty were then subject to direct sentence to Elmira Beformatory, just as offenders between the ages of twenty-one and thirty now are (Penal Law, § 2185). Offenders so sentenced directly to Elmira could not be given an indeterminate sentence of the State prison type nor could the court “ fix or limit the duration ” of the term of imprisonment (Penal Law, § 2195; People v. Madden, 120 App. Div. 338; People ex rel. Guariglia v. Foster, 275 App. Div. 893, affd. 301 N. Y. 515; see, also, Penal Law, § 2184-a).

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Bluebook (online)
286 A.D. 97, 140 N.Y.S.2d 817, 1955 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3984, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kenny-v-loos-nyappdiv-1955.