People v. Wright

127 Misc. 2d 885, 487 N.Y.S.2d 688, 1985 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2752
CourtNew York County Courts
DecidedMarch 22, 1985
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 127 Misc. 2d 885 (People v. Wright) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York County Courts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Wright, 127 Misc. 2d 885, 487 N.Y.S.2d 688, 1985 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2752 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1985).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Allan L. Winick, J.

CPL 710.30 directs that whenever the People intend to offer at a trial evidence of a statement made by a defendant to a public servant, notice of such intention must be given to the defendant within 15 days after arraignment and before trial.

Service of the notice may be made thereafter, provided, for good cause shown, the court permits later service.

In the absence of such notice, evidence of such statement is barred at the trial unless defendant moves to suppress such evidence.

What seems simple and straightforward, however, has caused considerable problem to the courts in situations where the People have served late notices where it would appear no prejudice has resulted to the defendant and an opportunity still exists or is provided to the defendant to test the admissibility of the statement at a hearing.

Perhaps the best place to start the traversal of this dilemma is with the case of People v Briggs decided by the Court of Appeals in 1975 (38 NY2d 319).

[886]*886In that case, which was a nonjury trial of defendant for leaving the scene of an accident, the trial court permitted the People to serve a notice of intention to offer evidence of a statement made by defendant to a police officer (CPL 710.30 [1]) during the trial. After protest by the defendant, the court granted defendant an adjournment to allow defense counsel to examine the police officer to determine the voluntariness of the statements. Protesting that no amount of adjournments could cure the defects, the defendant proceeded with the trial after a midday recess.

At the resumed trial, the court reserved decision on the defendant’s motion to preclude the People from offering such evidence and permitted the police officer to testify concerning the statements.

In reversing the order of the Appellate Term which affirmed defendant’s conviction, the Court of Appeals held that since the People had not shown “good cause” for the late service, the trial court should not have permitted any evidence with respect to these statements to be offered.

The only reason proffered for the failure to serve timely notice was a “lack of continuity” in the prosecutor’s office. Questioning whether this was even any cause, good or bad, the court rejected the argument as an example of an absence of orderly office procedure and held that if no notice is given before trial, only upon a showing of good cause could the court permit service of a late notice, and then only if balancing the reason against the harm to defendant resulting from the lateness of the notice recommends that in the interests of justice the late service be permitted at the trial, with an adjournment granted to defendant, if necessary.

Thus there are two elements which must first be satisfied before late service is to be permitted: (1) good cause for the failure to timely serve the notice and (2) on balance, lack of prejudice to the defendant resulting from the late service.

The court made it clear (apparently anyway) that without the trial court being satisfied as to the first element, the second element would not even have to be reached for determination. “If, however, no good cause is shown, a failure to give the required notice before trial mandates exclusion of those statements * * * To hold otherwise would be to condone and encourage noncompliance in the prosecutor’s office and to undermine the salutary purposes of the statute.” (People v Briggs, supra, at pp 323-324.)

[887]*887The Court of Appeals again dealt with this problem in People v Greer in 1977 (42 NY2d 170).

In this case, at the trial, the People attempted to introduce an oral statement not contained in the CPL 710.30 notice served upon defendant’s counsel. Objection was made to its introduction into evidence and counsel requested a Huntley hearing. During a colloquy between the trial court and counsel, no arguments indicating good cause for the failure to include defendant’s admission in the notice of intention were advanced.

The court overruled the objection and the requested hearing was, in effect, denied.

In affirming the Appellate Division’s reversal of the trial court’s conviction of defendant, and citing Briggs (supra), the Court of Appeals stated: “Only upon a showing of good cause may the court permit service of the notice during trial with a reasonable opportunity to make a suppression motion during trial (CPL 710.30, subd 2) and, if good cause is not shown, a failure to give the required notice of intention before trial mandates exclusion of the statement or statements”. (People v Greer, supra, at p 179.)

Once again, in 1979, in People v Spruill (47 NY2d 869), the Court of Appeals, citing Briggs (supra), ruled that a confession of defendant should not have been admitted at the trial because the People did not establish “good cause” for filing a late notice under CPL 710.30. The fact that a police officer had not informed the prosecutor of the confession prior to trial was not deemed to be “good cause” since the knowledge of the police officer was imputed to the District Attorney.

It is important to note so far that in each of these cases the issue of late notice arose at the trial where little opportunity existed to test the voluntariness of the statements except by granting an adjournment in the middle of the trial. That is not to say that the court was specifically limiting the effect of these decisions to instances where the statement is offered at the trial for the first time and there has been no prior effort to amend the CPL 710.30 notice. But the fact remains that the fact pattern in each case involved attempted introduction of the statement at the trial.

In a footnote to People v Washington (51 NY2d 214, 221, n), the Court of Appeals said: “Our decision in People v Briggs (38 NY2d 319) is not to the contrary. All that we decided in that case was that a statement could not be admitted at trial when the authorities had inexcusably failed to give the defendant the pretrial notice required by statute.”

[888]*888This footnote did nothing to help determine whether the court was limiting its ruling to trial situations.

This brings us to the current situation now presented to this court in hearings held in two cases on consecutive days.

At the Huntley hearing in the first case, the District Attorney filed an amendment to his notice under CPL 710.30 adding two additional statements to the one already contained in the notice.

In the second case the District Attorney gave oral notice, to the court and defense counsel, of other statements allegedly made by defendant.

In both cases, defense counsel took vigorous exception to the court considering these statements and moved to bar their use at the Huntley hearings and asked that the People be precluded from offering such statements at the trial.

The court reserved decisions on the motions. In the first case, since most of the issues presented to the court on the Huntley

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Related

People v. Smith
149 Misc. 2d 998 (New York Supreme Court, 1991)
People v. O'Doherty
517 N.E.2d 213 (New York Court of Appeals, 1987)
People v. Tufano
124 A.D.2d 688 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1986)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
127 Misc. 2d 885, 487 N.Y.S.2d 688, 1985 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2752, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-wright-nycountyct-1985.