PRESENTING THE GRAND JURY WITH EVIDENCE SUBSEQUENTLY RULED IRRELEVANT DID NOT AMOUNT TO PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT WARRANTING DISMISSAL OF THE INDICTMENT (FOURTH DEPT). ​

The Fourth Department, in a full-fledged opinion by Justice Curran, reversing County Court, determined the prosecutor’s presentation of evidence to the grand jury which was subsequently ruled irrelevant did not amount to misconduct warranting dismissal of the indictment. Defendant drove his car at high speed in poor road conditions. The car left the road, crashed and burned. The two passengers were killed. Defendant was charged with criminally negligent homicide. Driving at a high speed in poor road conditions, without more, will not support criminally negligent homicide. The prosecutor presented evidence of a blood test which indicated defendant had used marijuana to meet the criteria for criminally negligent homicide. When County Court determined the marijuana evidence was irrelevant because there was no proof the marijuana-use affected defendant’s ability to operate the car, County Court dismissed the indictment. The Fourth Department found that the presentation of the irrelevant evidence was not “prosecutorial misconduct” which justified dismissal of the indictment:

… [W]e conclude that the court erred in granting defendant’s renewed motion on the ground that the grand jury proceedings were rendered defective due to prosecutorial misconduct. At the outset, it is worth noting what is not at issue here. Specifically, we note that there is no evidence in this case that the People, in introducing the cannabinoid evidence to the grand jury, intentionally engaged “in an over-all pattern of bias and misconduct” that was “pervasive” and “willful” (Thompson, 22 NY3d at 699 [internal quotation marks omitted]). There also is no evidence that, in introducing the challenged evidence, the prosecutor was “motivated by bias or a desire to deceive the grand jury” (id. at 706) or that there was any “nefarious design to deliberately cause unfairness to defendant” (People v Wisdom, 23 NY3d 970, 973 [2014]).

Rather, the court’s conclusion that the People had impaired the integrity of the grand jury proceedings through misconduct was predicated on its determination that the People had improperly introduced the cannabinoid evidence—evidence that was later found to be irrelevant. In so concluding, the court failed to explain how the People’s reliance on the allegedly flawed cannabinoid evidence met the dismissal standard set forth by the Court of Appeals in the aforementioned cases. Indeed, it is quite clear from those decisions that a mere error or flaw by a prosecutor in presenting evidence does not, in fact, meet the demanding test for establishing entitlement to dismissal due to the impairment of the integrity of the grand jury proceedings … . People v Stencel, 2026 NY Slip Op 04574, Fourth Dept 7-24-26

Practice Point: Consult this opinion for a discussion of the nature of prosecutorial misconduct at the grand jury stage which mandates dismissal of the indictment, not the case here.