DEFENDANT’S STATEMENT WAS SUPPRESSED ON APPEAL, BUT THE FOURTH DEPARTMENT HELD THE ERROR WAS HARMLESS; THE COURT OF APPEALS DETERMINED THE FOURTH DEPARTMENT’S HARMLESS-ERROR FINDING WAS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE RECORD (CT APP).

The Court of Appeals, reversing the Fourth Department, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge Garcia, determined the Fourth Department should not have concluded the failure to suppress defendant’s statement was harmless error. Defendant pled guilty with the intention of appealing the denial of his suppression motion:

… [T]he Appellate Division held that defendant’s statement should have been suppressed, but that, because the gun would still have been admissible at trial, the error was harmless as there was no reasonable possibility that it contributed to defendant’s decision to plead guilty. On this record, however, we cannot say with certainty that the erroneous ruling played no part in that decision, and therefore we reverse. * * *

The record here is ambiguous at best as to defendant’s motivation in pleading guilty. Although defendant asserted during the plea colloquy that he was “pleading guilty because it’s a good deal,” he may only have believed that “in the face of all the evidence” admissible at the time, including his highly incriminating post-arrest statement “you saw what I had on me” … . Moreover, when entering his plea, defendant affirmatively sought assurances from the court that he could appeal the suppression determination, indicating the importance he placed on that adverse ruling …. . The People’s argument that defendant may only have been concerned with the court’s suppression of the physical evidence is speculative and insufficient to overcome the high bar for establishing defendant’s independent motivation for the plea. On this record, we cannot say that defendant’s decision to plead guilty was unaffected by the court’s erroneous suppression ruling, and therefore his guilty plea must be vacated. People v Robles, 2024 NY Slip Op 05819, CtApp 11-21-24

Practice Point: Consult this opinion for insight into the difficulty in applying a harmless-error analysis to a guilty plea.