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REVERSAL IS NOT REQUIRED WHEN A JURY NOTE WHICH WAS NOT ADDRESSED BY THE COURT HAD NO DIRECT RELEVANCE TO THE CHARGED OFFENSE (THIRD DEPT).

The Third Department, in a full-fledged opinion by Justice Garry, determined, after a reconstruction hearing, the trial judge was not made aware of a jury note which requested a trial exhibit and a chronology of events relating to the defendant’s dating the victim’s relative. The judge’s clerk provided the trial exhibit to the jury. No such chronology existed and the judge was not informed of the request for it. Because the chronology did not have anything to do with the charged offense, the failure to address that aspect of the jury note was not a mode of proceedings error:

… [T]he chronology requested by the jury involved background factual information regarding a former relationship between defendant and a relative of the victim that had no relevance to any of the elements of the charged crime or to the jury’s process of reaching a verdict … . … [I]n Silva, the Court of Appeals found that a trial court’s O’Rama [78 NY2d 270] error did not require reversal of the defendant’s drug-related convictions because the jury inquiry did not pertain to those convictions, but only to a conviction for weapon possession (People v Silva, 24 NY3d at 301 n 2). Likewise, in People v Walston (23 NY3d 986, 990 [2014]), the defendant’s manslaughter conviction was reversed because of a trial court’s mode of proceedings error, but the Court of Appeals held that reversal of a separate conviction on another charge was not required because the note did not address that offense.

Thus, reversal of a conviction is not required when a trial court fails to address a jury inquiry that has no direct relevance to that conviction … . People v Johnson, 2020 NY Slip Op 01668, Third Dept 3-12-20

 

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