Failure to Provide Reason for Denial of Youthful Offender Status Required Remittal

The Second Department remitted the matter to Supreme Court because Supreme Court did not place on the record its reasons for denying youthful offender status to the defendant, and there was no indication that Supreme Court considered whether to afford defendant youthful offender status:

In People v Rudolph (21 NY3d 497, 499), the Court of Appeals held that compliance with CPL 720.20(1), which provides that the sentencing court “must” determine whether an eligible defendant is to be treated as a youthful offender, “cannot be dispensed with, even where defendant has failed to ask to be treated as a youthful offender, or has purported to waive his or her right to make such a request.” Compliance with CPL 720.20(1) requires that the sentencing court actually consider and make an independent determination of whether an eligible youth is entitled to youthful offender treatment … . Here, the Supreme Court stated that “[t]here is no youthful offender adjudication” when it imposed sentence in accordance with the defendant’s plea agreement. However, the court did not place on the record any reason for not adjudicating the defendant a youthful offender, and there is nothing in the record to indicate that it actually independently considered youthful offender treatment instead of denying such treatment because it was not part of the plea agreement. Under these circumstances, we vacate the defendant’s sentence, and remit the matter … for a determination of whether the defendant should be afforded youthful offender treatment. People v T.E., 2015 NY Slip Op 06827, 2nd Dept 9-16-15