Court of Appeals of New York

Defendant was convicted of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree, and the People applied to have defendant adjudicated a persistent felony offender pursuant to Penal Law section 70.10, relying on three sets of defendant's prior felony convictions, some of which were out-of-state. The County Court sentenced defendant to two concurrent indeterminate terms of 15-to-life, and the Appellate Division affirmed the judgment of conviction and sentence. The judgment of the Appellate Division is affirmed, where: 1) section 70.10, by its plain terms, does not require an out-of-state predicate felony to have a New York counterpart in order to classify someone as a persistent felony offender; 2) section 70.10's legislative history shows that the New York equivalency test was considered and rejected at the time of its enactment; and 3) defendant's facial constitutional challenge is unpreserved, and his as-applied constitutional challenge lacks merit.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/26/2015
• Published 03/26/2015

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Court

• Court of Appeals of New York

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