Judge Properly Refused to Accept Defendant’s Plea to a Lesser Offense Because the Prosecutor Objected to the Plea Allocution as Insufficient

The Second Department determined the judge properly refused to accept defendant’s plea to a lesser offense when the prosecutor objected to the plea colloquy as insufficient:

“Since, in effect, permission to enter a lesser plea is a matter of grace, reasonable conditions may be attached thereto. What is reasonable is generally a question of fact attendant upon the circumstances” … . “A District Attorney may dictate the terms under which he [or she] will agree to consent to accept a guilty plea and where his terms are not met, he [or she] may withhold such consent; the withholding of such consent by statutory mandate renders the court without authority to accept a plea to anything less than the entire indictment” … . Here, in view of the prosecutor’s objections to the plea allocution, the court did not err in refusing to accept the plea … . People v Swails, 2014 NY Slip Op 03545, 2nd Dept 5-14-14