People v. Donnaruma

39 Misc. 3d 1056
CourtAlbany City Court
DecidedApril 12, 2013
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 39 Misc. 3d 1056 (People v. Donnaruma) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Albany City Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Donnaruma, 39 Misc. 3d 1056 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 2013).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

William A. Carter, J.

On June 14, 2012, Colin Donnaruma was arraigned on two counts of disorderly conduct (Penal Law § 240.20 [5], [6]) and one count of resisting arrest (Penal Law § 205.30). On November 26, 2012, this court issued a decision and order on the defendant’s omnibus motion. Now, by notice of motion filed on January 14, 2013, the defendant, through his attorney, Mark S. Mishler, Esq., moves for dismissal pursuant to CPL 30.30 (1) (b) and 170.30 (1) (d) and (f). The People responded to this motion by filing a letter with the court on January 28, 2013, lacking any affirmation, that states that the Albany County District Attorney’s Office “will not be filing a response and do not have any opposition to” the defendant’s motion. The matter now comes before the court for a decision.

Motion to Dismiss — “Impediment to Conviction”

The defendant moves, pursuant to CPL 170.30 (1) (f), to dismiss the accusatory instruments on the ground that there is a “jurisdictional or legal impediment to conviction.” CPL 170.30 (2) specifically provides that all CPL 170.30 motions to dismiss, [1058]*1058with the exception of CPL 30.30 motions, are governed by the time constraints set forth in CPL 255.20. CPL 255.20 (1) provides that “all pre-trial motions shall be served or filed within forty-five days after arraignment and before commencement of trial, or within such additional time as the court may fix upon application of the defendant made prior to entry of judgment.” Thus, a motion to dismiss, pursuant to CPL 170.30 (1) (f), should have been included in the defendant’s omnibus motion, or at the very least should have been filed with the court within 45 days of arraignment.

The court additionally notes that the defendant has failed to file a motion to reargue and/or renew (see CPLR 2221 [d] [2] [motion for leave to reargue should be based upon matters of fact or law overlooked or misapprehended by the court in determining the prior motion. A motion to reargue is not an opportunity to present new facts or arguments not previously offered, nor is it designed for litigants to present the same arguments already considered by the court]; [e] [2] [a motion for leave to renew shall be based on new facts not offered on the original motion or “shall demonstrate that there has been a change in the law that would change the prior determination”]). In addition, the defendant failed to make any application pursuant to CPL 255.20 (3), which expressly provides that, notwithstanding the motion time constraints set forth in CPL 255.20 (1), a court must entertain a late motion where it is established as a threshold matter that the motion is based upon

“grounds of which the defendant could not, with due diligence, have been previously aware, or which, for other good cause, could not reasonably have been raised within the period specified in subdivision one of this section or included within the single set of motion papers as required by subdivision two. Any other pre-trial motion made after the forty-five day period may be summarily denied, but the court, in the interest of justice, and for good cause shown, may, in its discretion, at any time before sentence, entertain and dispose of the motion on the merits.”

In the absence of the above-described applications, the court is constrained to summarily deny the defendant’s motion to dismiss, to the extent that it implicates CPL 170.30 (1) (f).

Motion to Dismiss — Postreadiness Delay — CPL 30.30 (1) (b)

The defendant moves, pursuant to CPL 170.30 (1) (d) and 30.30 (1) (b), to dismiss the accusatory instruments on the [1059]*1059ground of postreadiness delay. The defendant acknowledges that the People declared readiness on June 14, 2012. However, the defendant argues that the time from August 28, 2012 (the date the Albany County District Attorney verbally told defense counsel he was declining to prosecute this “Occupy Albany” case), to the date of the present motion, should be charged against the People as postreadiness delay. The defendant concludes that, when this time is counted against the People, “the speedy trial period expired on November 26, 2012 and the Court must dismiss the charges.” The court disagrees.

As the New York Court of Appeals has noted,

“[although CPL 30.30 (3) (b) recognizes the right of a defendant to move for dismissal after the People have answered ready, that provision simply preserves for the People such portion of the readiness period established by the section as remained available when readiness was originally declared, in the limited situation where ‘some exceptional fact or circumstance,’ occurring after the initial readiness response, makes it impossible for the People to proceed” (People v Anderson, 66 NY2d 529, 534 [1985]).

The Court further held that “not every postreadiness default by the People not generated by exceptional circumstances or resulting from action of the defendant will permit a Trial Judge to dismiss the criminal action” because “[t]here is no inherent power to dismiss” and “the purposes motivating enactment of CPL 30.30 do not mandate postreadiness dismissal when a lesser sanction is available” (id. at 537, quoting People v Douglass, 60 NY2d 194 [1983]).

The entire basis of the defendant’s CPL 30.30 postreadiness motion is premised upon what this court previously deemed to be a legal nullity: the Albany County District Attorney’s hearsay statement to defense counsel and two letters filed with the court, that were not affirmed, pronouncing his decision to not prosecute this case. While it is not entirely clear, it appears that the Albany County District Attorney has been attempting to invoke the doctrine of nolle prosequi through the filing of the above two letters with this court declaring his intention to decline prosecution. “Nolle prosequi is commonly defined as ‘a formal entry on the record by the prosecuting officer by which he declares that he will not prosecute the case further’ ” (People v Douglass at 202 n 3, quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 945 [5th ed]). However, in 1881, with the passage of section 672 of the [1060]*1060Code of Criminal Procedure, entry of a nolle prosequi was abolished (see id. at 204). In 1970, with the passage of Criminal Procedure Law, the legislature enacted section 170.30 as an “all inclusive” comprehensive legislative scheme for dealing with motions to dismiss local criminal court accusatory instruments (People v Douglass at 201 [reciting the extensive legislative history leading up to the passage of CPL 170.30, including the abolishment of entry of a nolle prosequi and emphasizing that courts historically never had inherent authority to dismiss a case sua sponte]). Thus, in the absence of a CPL 170.30 motion (see CPL 170.30 [1] [g]), the District Attorney’s pronouncement of his subjective feelings, including verbalization of his prosecutorial discretion, is legally irrelevant. As this court has previously held:

“When a district attorney exercises his or her discretion in invoking the jurisdiction of the court by pursuing a prosecution, as was done in this case, he or she may not simply walk away from the case and abandon it. As has been noted by the Third Department, ‘a District Attorney does not possess unfettered discretion over the disposition of [an accusatory instrument] ’ (Matter of Cloke v Pulver, 243 AD2d 185, 189 [3 Dept 1998]).

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Related

Donnaruma v. Carter
41 Misc. 3d 195 (New York Supreme Court, 2013)

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Bluebook (online)
39 Misc. 3d 1056, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-donnaruma-nyalbanycityct-2013.