THE PEOPLE &C., APPELLANT, v. WILLIAM MACHADO, RESPONDENT.
90 N.Y.2d 187, 681 N.E.2d 409, 659 N.Y.S.2d 242 (1997).
June 10, 1997
(Case Commentary by the Editorial Board)
2 No. 117 (1997 NY Int. 101)
Decided June 10, 1997
_________________________________________________________________
This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication
in the New York Reports.
Seth M. Lieberman, for appellant.
Judith Stern, for respondent.
KAYE, CHIEF JUDGE:
On direct appeal from a judgment of conviction, reversal is required
when the prosecution has failed to turn over Rosario material. On CPL
440.10 motions made after direct appeal has been concluded, however,
for vacatur of a conviction a defendant must demonstrate
prejudice--meaning a reasonable possibility that the prosecution's
failure to make Rosario disclosure materially contributed to the
verdict. This appeal raises yet another novel question in our Rosario
jurisprudence: which of the two standards applies when a CPL 440.10
motion is made before a defendant's direct appeal has been
exhausted--the "per se" rule, or a requirement of prejudice? We
conclude that a uniform standard governs CPL 440.10 motions, and remit
to the Appellate Division to determine whether defendant has been
prejudiced by the Rosario violation.
Facts
On the morning of February 22, 1988, defendant, wielding a knife,
seized his estranged wife, Lydia Machado, as she was leaving her
mother's house in Brooklyn and threw her into his van. As defendant
began to drive away, Machado's brother, Edwin Morales, grabbed hold of
the driver's side window of the van. Morales was carried down the
block until he apparently hit the pole of a street sign. Morales died
a short time later as a result of internal injuries he sustained from
the impact.
For the next several hours, defendant drove through the tri-State area
with Machado, forcing her onto the floor of the van, and punched and
kicked her. At one point he stopped, bound her hands with a belt,
gagged her and held a knife to her throat, drawing blood. Following a
SNIPPETS:
THE PEOPLE &C., APPELLANT, v. WILLIAM MACHADO, RESPONDENT.
On direct appeal from a judgment of conviction, reversal is required when the prosecution has
This appeal raises yet another novel question in our Rosario jurisprudence: which of the two
We conclude that a uniform standard governs CPL 440.10 motions, and remit to the Appellate
Defendant was charged with two counts of Murder in the Second Degree (Penal Law §§ 125.25(2),
In August 1990, the People for the first time provided defendant with a copy of a report
Defendant perfected his appeal on February 2, 1992, contending that the People's failure to
There was, however, no record before the court related to the claimed violation; on October
In his motion, defendant argued that because he had moved to vacate the judgment of
Months later, Supreme Court denied defendant's CPL 440.10 motion, concluding that the report
A Judge of this Court granted the People's leave application.
Motivated by the "right sense of justice," this Court 36 years ago in People v Rosario (9
a trial court determined which documents were relevant to the defense and ordered production
Consolazio articulated a rule of per se reversal, in order to assure the People's scrupulous
In Jackson, the Court was asked to decide whether the automatic reversal rule also should
There, for the first time the Court was faced with the task of harmonizing the common-law
Noting that Rosario was not based on State or Federal constitutional principles, but rather
Thus, the Court observed, the statute explicitly affords a remedy only if the defendant can
Agreeing with the Legislature that this finality interest was "formidable," and concluding
However, as is abundantly clear from the Court's opinion, in Novoa the Court was not asked to
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