THE PEOPLE &C., RESPONDENT, v. ANGEL CLAUDIO, APPELLANT.
83 N.Y.2d 76, 629 N.E.2d 384, 607 N.Y.S.2d 912 (1993).
December 21, 1993
2 No. 216 (1993 NY Int. 271)
Decided December 21, 1993
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This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication
in the New York Reports.
William E. Hellerstein, for Appellant.
John M. Castellano, for Respondent.
LEVINE, J:
In the spring of 1980, defendant was indicted for the murder of a
16-year-old high school student. The indictment was based principally
on defendant's own inculpatory statements, which had been made to the
District Attorney's representative upon the advice of defendant's
retained attorney. In 1983, this Court affirmed the denial of
defendant's motion to suppress these inculpatory statements after
rejecting appellate counsel's contention that they were the result of
a violation of defendant's Sixth Amendment right to the effective
assistance of counsel (People v Claudio, 59 NY2d 556 (Claudio I)).
Defendant appears before us once again following a ruling by the
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that a writ of
habeas corpus should be granted and defendant released from state
custody "unless the state affords (defendant) an opportunity to
present (his) Article 1, § 6 state law claim to the New York Court of
Appeals" (Claudio v Scully, 982 F2d 798, 806). We now hold, as we did
in Claudio I, that the ineffectiveness of defendant's first retained
counsel affords no basis for reversal of his conviction.
We accept the premise, which was shared by every court that has
considered this case, that retained counsel's conduct in advising
defendant to confess to the police -- at a time when there was no
concrete evidence against him and no possibility of a plea offer --
represented gross professional incompetence (see, Claudio I, supra, at
560; 85 AD2d 245, 251; Claudio v Scully, 982 F2d 798, 802). The
dispositive issue, therefore, is whether our holdings that the State
constitutional right to counsel indelibly attaches when a criminal
suspect invokes that right by obtaining an attorney (see, People v
Skinner, 52 NY2d 24; People v Hobson, 39 NY2d 479; People v Arthur, 22
NY2d 325) imply a constitutional State guarantee of effective
SNIPPETS:
THE PEOPLE &C., RESPONDENT, v. ANGEL CLAUDIO, APPELLANT.
The indictment was based principally on defendant's own inculpatory statements, which had
In 1983, this Court affirmed the denial of defendant's motion to suppress these inculpatory
Defendant appears before us once again following a ruling by the United States Court of
Defendant acknowledges that all our relevant precedents have involved some law enforcement
defendant has not cited any case declaring a State constitutional right to effective
Defendant supports this deduction largely with the statement in People v Skinner (supra) that
Our holdings that the right to counsel indelibly attaches upon the entry of counsel at the
Moreover, the guarantee exists independent of any prosecutorial or judicial misconduct
The foregoing intrinsic premise and purposes of the constitutional right to effective
The language of our State Constitution also suggests that the guarantee of effective
In Claudio I, we ruled that defendant's Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of
Thus, although in People v Beam we discussed the possibility that the retained attorney's
ies.
Because the majority's analysis reduces what was previously regarded as an important
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