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Failure to Address Youthful Offender Eligibility Required Remittal

The Fourth Department determined the trial court did not consider whether the defendant should be adjudicated a youthful offender and sent the matter back:

At sentencing, defense counsel made several applications for defendant to be treated as a youthful offender, but the court did not expressly rule on them; instead, the court imposed a sentence that was incompatible with youthful offender treatment.

“Upon conviction of an eligible youth, the court must order a [presentence] investigation of the defendant.  After receipt of a written report of the investigation and at the time of pronouncing sentence the court must determine whether or not the eligible youth is a youthful offender” (CPL 720.20 [1]).  A sentencing court must determine whether to grant youthful offender status to every defendant who is eligible for it because, inter alia, “[t]he judgment of a court as to which young people have a real likelihood of turning their lives around is just too valuable, both to the offender and to the community, to be sacrificed in plea bargaining” … .  “[W]e cannot deem the court’s failure to rule on the. . . [applications] as . . . denial[s] thereof” … .  Furthermore, even if the court had denied the applications, there is no information in the record from which we could ascertain whether the court properly did so in the exercise of its discretion, or whether it improperly acceded to the prosecutor’s plea conditions.  People v Potter, 1199, 4th Dept 2-7-14

 

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