The Fourth Department determined a 2003 murder depraved indifference murder conviction must be reversed because the case was on appeal when the law of depraved indifference murder was clarified to exclude the intentional murder of a single victim with a weapon:
… [W]e conclude that the evidence establishes that defendant accosted decedent, who was leaving a grocery store. Defendant, who told police investigators he had been informed that decedent had been sent by another man to injure defendant, confronted decedent, grabbed him by either his clothing or by a gold necklace that he was wearing, and dragged him across the street. A friend of decedent’s attempted to intervene at some point, at which time defendant displayed a weapon and attempted to shoot the friend, but the gun did not fire. Defendant struck decedent in the face with the handgun, and decedent’s friend ran to his car and drove it toward the location where defendant was with decedent. Defendant then fired the weapon approximately eight times. At least six of those shots hit decedent, including two shots that entered his back, and two shots hit the car that decedent’s friend was driving. …
In his motion for a trial order of dismissal with respect to the count of depraved indifference murder, defense counsel argued that defendant’s “conduct was intentional or it was nothing at all. If this isn’t intentional I don’t know what is.” Thus, the issue raised on this de novo appeal was presented to Supreme Court and is therefore preserved for our review.
Next, although defendant was convicted before the Court of Appeals decided People v Feingold (7 NY3d 288, 296 [2006]), which definitively stated for the first time that the depraved indifference element of depraved indifference murder is a culpable mental state rather than the circumstances under which the killing is committed, the People correctly concede that the Feingold standard applies to this appeal inasmuch as defendant’s direct appeal was pending when Feingold was decided … . People v Parris, 2019 NY Slip Op 04828, Fourth Dept 6-14-19