Court of Appeals of New York

In these two proceedings, each court accepted a verdict without affirmatively acknowledging or responding to a jury's substantive request for information during deliberations. Defendants are entitled to new trials, where: 1) failure to apprise counsel about the specific contents of a substantive note from a deliberating jury violates the fundamental tenets of CPL 310.30 and qualifies as a mode of proceedings error; 2) the parties must be given meaningful notice of a jury's request for substantive information, and deliberating jurors must receive a meaningful response to their inquiry, neither of which occurred here; and 3) the deficiencies could have been easily avoided by making a record of compliance within People v. O'Rama guidelines.

Appellate Information

• Decided 11/24/2014
• Published 11/24/2014

Judges

• Graffeo

Court

• Court of Appeals of New York

Counsel