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Defendant Was Apparently Erroneously Sentenced to Five Years When the Correct Sentence Was 15 Years—Pursuant to a Resettlement of the Sentencing Transcript Two Months After Defendant’s Release, He Was Resentenced to 15 Years—Because Defendant Had a Legitimate Expectation of Finality Re: the Five-Year Sentence, the Resentence Violated the Double Jeopardy Clause

The Second Department determined defendant’s resentencing violated the Double Jeopardy clause.  Defendant had been erroneously sentenced to five years for criminal possession of a weapon when the sentence apparently should have been 15 years.  After defendant’s successful habeas corpus action, his assault conviction was vacated and he was released from prison, having served 8 years.  Two months after his release, pursuant to a resettlement proceeding to correct an error in the sentencing transcript, the defendant was resentenced to 15 years and reincarcerated:

Courts possess “the inherent power to correct their records, where the correction relates to mistakes, or errors, which may be termed clerical in their nature, or where it is made in order to conform the record to the truth” … . This inherent authority extends to circumstances “where it clearly appears that a mistake or error occurred at the time a sentence was imposed” … . However, as with resentencing, an order correcting an error in a transcript of a sentencing proceeding is subject to a temporal limitation imposed by the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution … .

The Double Jeopardy Clause prevents a sentence from being increased once a defendant has a legitimate expectation of finality of the sentence … . “[A] legitimate expectation of finality turns on the completion of a sentence” … . Here, the resettlement of the sentencing transcript almost three years after the sentence was purportedly satisfied, and more than two months after the defendant’s release from prison in purported full satisfaction of that sentence, violated the constitutional prohibition on subjecting a criminal defendant to double jeopardy. For more than seven years after the sentence was imposed, the People represented to the defendant, and to State and federal courts, that the transcript accurately reflected a five-year sentence. Accordingly, upon his release from prison, the defendant had served out his sentence “as reasonably understood by all the parties” … . He thus acquired a legitimate expectation of finality with respect to the sentence, and the later resettlement of the transcript of the sentencing proceeding violated his rights under the Double Jeopardy Clause … . People v Langston, 2014 NY Slip Op 07182, 2nd Dept 10-22-14

 

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