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DEFENDANT WAS GIVEN THE ERRONEOUS IMPRESSION THE WAIVER OF APPEAL FORECLOSED ALL APPELLATE RIGHTS; THE WAIVER WAS THEREFORE INVALID (FOURTH DEPT). ​

The Fourth Department determined defendant’s waiver of appeal was not valid because the court gave the erroneous impression all appellate rights were given up by the waiver:

County Court’s oral explanation of the waiver suggested that defendant was entirely ceding any ability to challenge his guilty plea on appeal, but such an “improper description of the scope of the appellate rights relinquished by the waiver is refuted by . . . precedent, whereby a defendant retains the right to appellate review of very selective fundamental issues, including the voluntariness of the plea” … . In addition, by further explaining that the cost of the plea bargain was that defendant would no longer have the right ordinarily afforded to other defendants to appeal to a higher court any decision the court had made, the court “mischaracterized the waiver of the right to appeal, portraying it in effect as an absolute bar’ to the taking of an appeal” … . The written waiver executed by defendant did not contain clarifying language; instead, it perpetuated the mischaracterization that the appeal waiver constituted an absolute bar to the taking of a first-tier direct appeal and even stated that the rights defendant was waiving included the “right to have an attorney appointed” if he could not afford one and the “right to submit a brief and argue before an appellate court issues relating to [his] sentence and conviction” … . Where, as here, the “trial court has utterly mischaracterized the nature of the right a defendant was being asked to cede,’ [this] [C]ourt cannot be certain that the defendant comprehended the nature of the waiver of appellate rights’ ” … . People v Youngs, 2020 NY Slip Op 02558, Fourth Dept 5-1-20

 

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