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People v. Parker2/7/2003
ffect of any such provision, is of course, to discourage assertion of the Fifth Amendment right not to plead guilty and to deter exercise of the Sixth Amendment right to demand a jury trial" (Jackson, 390 US at 581).
In Corbitt v New Jersey (439 US 212), a case determined by the Court of Appeals to be distinguishable from Hynes, defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree after a trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court rejected a Jackson challenge to the New Jersey homicide statutes, which provided for a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for a defendant convicted of murder in the first degree after trial, but for a sentence of life imprisonment or "'the same as that imposed upon a conviction of murder in the second degree'" for a defendant who pleaded non vult or nolo contendere (id. at 215). Noting that it was a "material fact" that the maximum penalty was life imprisonment and not death (id. at 217), the Court determined that there was no Jackson infirmity in the statutes because a defendant who pleaded guilty could receive the same punishment as a defendant who exercised the right to a jury trial, i.e., life imprisonment, and the "risk of that punishment is not completely avoided by pleading non vult" (id.). Thus, by its decision in Corbitt, the Supreme Court made clear that only those statutory schemes that reserve the maximum penalty for defendants who exercise the right to trial are unconstitutional under Jackson.
In Hynes and its companion case, Matter of Relin v Connell, the Court of Appeals struck down CPL 220.10 (5) (e) and 220.30 (3) (b) (vii) as facially invalid under a Jackson analysis. Under those statutory provisions, the same provisions at issue here, a defendant who pleaded guilty could escape the greater penalty of death, but a (*5)defendant who maintained his innocence and exercised the right to trial was exposed to it (see Hynes, 92 NY2d at 626). The Court determined that the statutory provisions at issue must be excised from the statutes in order to cure an unconstitutional chilling of the rights of defendants against whom a notice to seek the death penalty has been filed because the statutory scheme - just as that in Jackson - allows the death penalty only upon conviction after trial and not upon conviction by guilty plea (see id. at 620). Notably, the Court distinguished Corbitt on the ground that the statute in that case provided the same maximum penalty for all defendants, i.e., life imprisonment, regardless of whether they were convicted by plea or upon trial (see id. at 625). Thus, the Court in Hynes wrote that, unlike the New York sentencing scheme, the New Jersey statute did not "'reserve the maximum punishment for murder for those who insist on a jury trial'" (id., quoting Corbitt, 439 US at 217). In Hynes, the Court's solution to the Jackson violation was to eliminate the option to plead guilty to first degree murder once a notice of intent to seek the death penalty is pending. Thus, under the post-Hynes statutory scheme, it cannot be said that the maximum penalty is reserved for those defendants who exercise the right to trial, inasmuch as defendants against whom a notice of intent to seek the death penalty is pending have no choice but to go to trial. A defendant against whom a notice of intent to seek the death penalty has not been filed or has been filed and then withdrawn may plead guilty to murder in the first degree, and a defendant against whom a notice of intent to seek the death penalty is pending may plead guilty to a lesser crime (see id. at 629).
" he first full appeal of a sentence of death in New York in almost 20 years" came before the Court of Appeals in Harris (98 NY2d at 471). In Harris, the defend
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