State ex rel. Jerome A. v. Ponte

2017 NY Slip Op 5159, 151 A.D.3d 613, 54 N.Y.S.3d 292

• Court: Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
• Decided: June 22, 2017
• Docket: 4344 100580/16
• Status: Published

Opinion

Judgment and order (one paper), Supreme Court, New York County (Daniel P. Conviser, J.), entered June 8, 2016, which denied the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and dismissed the proceeding, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

As we held on a prior appeal in a related proceeding, the State met its probable cause burden at the hearing held to determine that issue (see Mental Hygiene Law § 10.06 [g]), and relator’s pretrial detention is not unconstitutional (see Matter of State of New York v Jerome A., 137 AD3d 557 [1st Dept 2016] [Jerome I]). Petitioner’s contention that the State’s expert failed to adduce sufficient evidence of a predisposing mental disorder (see Mental Hygiene Law § 10.03 [i]) is meritless.

Petitioner’s argument that, in reversing on the law in Je rome I, we left undisturbed the hearing court’s finding that the State had also failed to meet its probable cause burden on the second prong of the “mental abnormality” showing (that relator’s qualifying mental disorder causes him “serious difficulty” in controlling his sex offending conduct), is also without merit. Necessarily implicit in Jerome I was a finding that the State had met its probable cause burden on both prongs, and we in fact so held.

Concur — Sweeny, J.P., Mazzarelli, Andrias, Moskowitz and Gische, JJ.