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Failure to Challenge Conviction Rendered Invalid by Not Advising Defendant of the Period of Post Release Supervision [PRS] Constitutes Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

The First Department determined the defendant did not receive effective assistance of counsel when he was sentenced as a predicate felony offender.  Counsel failed to challenge a 2000 conviction upon a guilty plea which was invalid because defendant was not apprised of the period of post release supervision (PRS) which was subsequently imposed. The fact that the PRS was later removed from the sentence did not cure the error because the defendant had already served four years of PRS and had spent time in jail for a violation of supervision:

In connection with the 2000 conviction, Supreme Court, New York County added postrelease supervision to the sentence in 2009 to cure an unlawful administrative imposition of PRS … . In May, 2010 that court removed PRS from the sentence in accordance with People v Williams (14 NY3d 198 [2010]). Contrary to the People’s sole argument on appeal addressing the Catu issue [the initial failure to advise defendant of the period of post release supervision], the vacatur of defendant’s PRS could not cure the Catu error, or give defendant the benefit of his plea, since at the time of the vacatur he had already served four years of PRS, and had also spent time in jail in violation of that supervision. …

In connection with the instant CPL 440.20 motion [motion to vacate the sentence], the attorney who represented defendant at his 2010 persistent violent felony offender adjudication and sentencing acknowledged that he had no strategic reason for failing to challenge the 2000 conviction, and that he never inquired into whether defendant had been advised about PRS at his 2000 plea proceeding. He further affirmed that had he been aware that the conviction was obtained in violation of Catu, he would have in fact challenged its use to enhance defendant’s sentence in this case. Thus, this was not a case where an attorney may have reasonably believed that it would have been futile to raise a Catu issue regarding the constitutionality, for predicate felony purposes, of defendant’s 2000 conviction, or that the law was unclear on this issue… .  People v Fagan, 2014 NY Slip Op 02344, 1st Dept 4-3-14

 

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