PEOPLE v. D. M., Defendant–Appellant. (2026)

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Ruth Pickholz, J.), rendered November 19, 2021, convicting defendant, upon his plea of guilty, of attempted robbery in the second degree, adjudicating him a youthful offender, and sentencing him to a four-year term of probation, unanimously modified, on the law, to the extent of vacating the mandatory surcharge and crime victim assistance fee imposed at sentencing, and otherwise affirmed.

Defendant's challenges to the validity of his plea do not fall within the narrow exception to the preservation requirement (see People v Lopez, 71 NY2d 662, 665 [1988] ).  As an alternative holding, we find that defendant's arguments on the merits are unavailing.  The court's omission of the “aided by another” element of second-degree robbery when eliciting defendant's factual admissions did not render the plea invalid.  “[A]n allocution based on a negotiated plea need not elicit from a defendant specific admissions as to each element of the charged crime” (People v Goldstein, 12 NY3d 295, 301 [2009] ).  Defendant, represented by able counsel who secured a favorable sentence, “clearly understood the nature of the charges to which he was pleading and willingly entered his plea to obtain the benefit of the bargain he had struck” (id.).

Nor was the plea rendered invalid because the court elicited defendant's factual admission of guilt before ensuring that he understood his trial rights (see People v Gillegbower, 143 AD3d 479 [1st Dept 2016], lv denied 28 NY3d 1145 [2017] ).  To the extent it would have been preferable for the court to address defendant's trial rights before eliciting his admissions, there is no reasonable basis for concluding that the court's sequencing of the aspects of the guilty plea undermined its voluntariness.

The court's imposition of the surcharge and a victim assistance fee at sentencing must be vacated because defendant was sentenced after the legislature repealed the statutory provisions authorizing imposition of a mandatory surcharge and other fees on youthful offenders (see People v Rockeem M., 239 AD3d 576 [1st Dept 2025] ).