The Court of Appeals, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge Pigott, with a concurring opinion and over a dissenting opinion, determined the 2005 case which invalidated guilty pleas accepted without express notice of the period of postrelase supervision (PRS) (People v Catu, 4 NY3d 242) should not be applied retroactively. In both cases before the court, the pre-Catu convictions by guilty plea were challenged to prohibit their consideration as predicate crimes for sentencing in post-Catu offenses. The analysis, which encompasses federal and state constitutional law, is too complex to fairly summarize here:
… [N]either [defendant’s] conviction was obtained in violation of the law as it existed at the time of their respective convictions. Both state and federal law required that a defendant demonstrate that he would not have pleaded guilty had he known about a mandatory term of his sentence. It was not until our 2005 decision in Catu that a defendant was entitled to automatic vacatur. * * *
Our Catu “automatic vacatur” rule did not constitute ,,, a “watershed rule”… . Catu was not necessary to prevent an impermissibly large risk of an inaccurate conviction, and it is doubtful that the failure of the courts to apprise defendants … of the PRS component resulted in them pleading guilty to crimes that they did not commit. Indeed, when presented with their prior convictions, defendants … acknowledged that they were the individuals mentioned in the predicate felony statements filed by the People, and that they did not wish to challenge any of the allegations contained within their respective statements. People v Smith, 2016 NY Slip Op 07106, CtApp 11-1-16
CRIMINAL LAW (PEOPLE VS CATU, WHICH INVALIDATED GUILTLY PLEAS WHERE THE PERIOD OF POSTRELEASE SUPERVISION WAS NOT DISCUSSED, SHOULD NOT BE APPLIED RETROACTIVELY)/POSTRELEASE SUPERVISION (PEOPLE VS CATU, WHICH INVALIDATED GUILTLY PLEAS WHERE THE PERIOD OF POSTRELEASE SUPERVISION WAS NOT DISCUSSED, SHOULD NOT BE APPLIED RETROACTIVELY).CATU, PEOPLE V (PEOPLE VS CATU, WHICH INVALIDATED GUILTLY PLEAS WHERE THE PERIOD OF POSTRELEASE SUPERVISION WAS NOT DISCUSSED, SHOULD NOT BE APPLIED RETROACTIVELY)/GUILTY PLEAS (PEOPLE VS CATU, WHICH INVALIDATED GUILTLY PLEAS WHERE THE PERIOD OF POSTRELEASE SUPERVISION WAS NOT DISCUSSED, SHOULD NOT BE APPLIED RETROACTIVELY)