THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v SIMEON DUGGINS, Appellant.
Court of Appeals of the State of New York
Argued October 14, 2004; decided December 2, 2004
821 NE2d 942, 788 NYS2d 638, 3 NY3d 522
Warren S. Landau, New York City, and Lynn W.L. Fahey for appellant. I. The evidence was insufficient to establish that appellant killed Wayne Flowers “as part of the same criminal transaction” in which he killed Franklin Dennis in a different location an hour and a half later, and the court erred in importing the broad definition of a “criminal transaction” contained in
OPINION OF THE COURT
READ, J.
We hold that the People adduced legally sufficient evidence that defendant committed first-degree murder by killing multiple victims during the “same criminal transaction” (
Defendant killed two people in a 90-minute time span. The first killing occurred about 1:40 a.m. on July 4, 1999, and the second took place nearby at roughly 3:10 a.m. The evidence against defendant consisted of statements and confessions that he made after being arrested; specifically, one that the police reduced to writing, which defendant signed, and another in a 50-minute videotaped interview conducted by an assistant district attorney. Additionally, the People presented several witnesses at trial who corroborated details of defendant‘s confessions.
Defendant, who acknowledged being friendly with members of the “Bloods,” fatally shot his two victims, who he claimed were members of the “Crips,” because he believed that they were prepared to carry out a contract to kill him. The two homicides occurred within a relatively small area of a housing project where defendant had lived until two weeks beforehand. He moved away after a conflict with someone named “Snag.” Defendant subsequently learned that Snag, who had abandoned the Bloods to become a Crip, had issued an order or contract, called a “187” in gang parlance, directing any member of the Crips to kill him. Armed with a .38 caliber snub-nosed handgun, defendant returned to the housing project on July 3, 1999 to “squash” this contract on his life. As defendant put it, he intended to “catch[ ]” Snag.
Initially, defendant encountered a man known to him as “Callie” standing with another man. According to defendant, these men, like Snag, belonged to the Crips, and were “hench[es]” who could carry out the hit. When defendant tried to talk to the two men, they said nothing. He then entered a building in the housing project to visit a friend. From a window, defendant observed Callie and his companion, now standing with a third man. Fearing that the three men were armed and on the lookout for him, defendant and his unarmed friend decamped to the building‘s roof, where defendant remained for nearly four hours.
Despite his professed fear for his life, defendant eventually left the roof—now alone, but still armed—and went to a fast-
As defendant ran away after shooting Callie, he realized that as a result of what he had just done, Snag would now surely want him dead. He circled back to the roof, a vantage point from which to look out for Snag, “the dude [he] had the main beef with,” and watched as police officers placed crime scene tape near Callie‘s body. Defendant saw Snag approach the crime scene on a bike “to see what happened to . . . his gang members,” then leave. Defendant reloaded his gun. As he explained, “I went this far [so] I better go on with it or . . . I‘m gonna wind up dead.”
When defendant next spied Snag, standing on the sidewalk below and smoking marijuana, he climbed down a fire escape from the roof to street level and crept towards him. With his gun at the ready, defendant ducked behind a wall on which Snag‘s male and two female companions were sitting. Then defendant called out, causing Snag to turn. Although he saw no weapon in Snag‘s hands, defendant fired three shots, inflicting a fatal chest wound.2 Again, defendant claimed that he wanted his victim to “feel it,” but not to die.
Following the second killing, defendant hid in a vacant apartment in the housing project; he left the following day, disguised in women‘s clothing. The police arrested him approximately 2½ weeks later.3
A divided Appellate Division affirmed defendant‘s judgment of conviction (1 AD3d 450 [2d Dept 2003]), and a dissenting Justice of that Court granted him leave to appeal to us. We now affirm.4
II.
Defendant asserts that the phrase “criminal transaction” in subdivision (1) (a) (viii) of the first-degree murder statute must be understood by its ordinary meaning and not by reference to the definition in
“Words of technical or special meaning are construed according to their technical sense, in the absence of anything to indicate a contrary legislative intent” (Statutes § 233). Put somewhat differently, when a statute does not define a particular term, it is presumed that the term should “be given its ‘precise and well settled legal meaning in the jurisprudence of the state‘” (Matter of Moran Towing & Transp. Co. v New York State Tax Commn., 72 NY2d 166, 173 [1988], quoting McKinney‘s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes § 233).
Moreover, “[w]hen terms of art or peculiar phrases are used, it is supposed that the Legislature had in view the subject matter about which such terms or phrases are commonly employed” (McKinney‘s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes § 233, at 397). As a corollary, “[w]here the same word or group of words is used in . . . different statutes, if the acts are similar in intent and character the same meaning may be attached to them” (McKinney‘s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes § 236, at 401-402). Applying these standard rules of statutory construction, we conclude that the trial court properly construed “criminal transaction” in subdivision (1) (a) (viii) of the first-degree murder statute by reference to the definition in
It is difficult to imagine a clearer example of “[w]ords of technical or special meaning” (McKinney‘s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes § 233) than the phrase “criminal transaction” as defined in
Further, applying the species of dictionary definition proposed by defendant would render the statute vague, something the Legislature surely did not intend for a statute drafted to “narrow” the potential class of intentional murderers exposed to capital punishment (see People v Harris, 98 NY2d 452, 476 [2002] [the United States Supreme Court has “recognized that a state‘s capital sentencing scheme must genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty” (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)]; see also People v Cahill, 2 NY3d 14, 68 [2003] [“(T)he Legislature crafted
Thus, liability under
Defendant makes two arguments to counter the importation of
Defendant also argues that, at most, only the “single criminal incident” definition in subdivision (2) (a) of
Initially, there is no basis for incorporating only half of
Additionally, the potential superfluity of which defendant complains would exist only if he is correct that a “common scheme or plan” is equivalent to a “single criminal venture.” The Legislature, however, has treated these two terms of art as distinct.
The plain language of
Further, under
By way of explanation, the first-degree murder statute provides that “[a] person is guilty of murder in the first degree when . . . [w]ith intent to cause the death of another person, he causes the death of such person or of a third person” (
Specifically, liability under subdivision (viii) attaches solely if, “as part of the same criminal transaction, the defendant, with intent to cause serious physical injury to or the death of an additional person or persons, causes the death of an additional person or persons” (
By contrast, subdivision (1) (a) (xi) speaks in the past tense (“caused“), not the present tense (“causes” as used in subparagraph [viii]). Liability attaches under subparagraph (xi) solely “when . . . [w]ith intent to cause the death of another person, he causes the death of such person or of a third person; and . . . the defendant intentionally caused the death of two or more additional persons within the state in separate criminal transactions within a period of twenty-four months” (
Thus, subdivision (1) (a) (xi) contemplates that the additional homicides necessary to aggravate a threshold intentional second-
Because we conclude that the trial court properly charged the jury using the
By his own admission, defendant armed himself and set about “squash[ing]” the contract on his life by “catch[ing]” Snag, the person whom he held responsible for placing the contract. Before finding Snag, though, defendant happened upon Callie, whom he viewed as Snag‘s enforcer and therefore a likely candidate to carry out the hit. As part of his effort to “squash” the contract, defendant decided to confront Callie and, as a result of this motivation, he killed Callie.
After killing Callie, defendant raced back to an area less than a block away where he knew he would likely encounter Snag. Although defendant had a 90-minute interval during which to leave, he instead chose to stay, determined to “go on with it.” Carrying through on his continuing motivation to “squash” the contract, defendant indeed went “on with it” by reloading his gun and lying in wait for an opportunity to “catch[ ]” Snag. Ultimately, defendant completed exactly what he had set out to
The spatial and temporal proximity of defendant‘s homicidal acts, all of which were fueled by a common motivation, establish that he acted during the “same criminal transaction.” Indeed, defendant‘s various acts were both “so closely related and connected in point of time and circumstance of commission as to constitute a single criminal incident” (
R.S. SMITH, J. (dissenting). I agree with the majority that the evidence was sufficient to permit a correctly-charged jury to convict defendant of first degree murder, and that the Sandoval error of which defendant complains was harmless. I dissent from affirmance of the conviction, however, because I believe the jury was incorrectly charged on the definition of “criminal transaction.” The definition used in the charge, while broadening the scope of the subparagraph of the Penal Law involved in this case, shrinks an important part of another subparagraph—the “common scheme or plan” branch of the serial murder statute—to the vanishing point.
Murder in the first degree is defined in
“(viii) as part of the same criminal transaction, the defendant, with intent to cause serious physical injury to or the death of an additional person or persons, causes the death of an additional person or persons; provided, however, the victim is not a participant in the criminal transaction” (emphasis added).
Section 125.27 (1) (a) (xi) says a killing may be murder in the first degree where:
“(xi) the defendant intentionally caused the death of two or more additional persons within the state in separate criminal transactions within a period of twenty-four months when committed in a similar fashion or pursuant to a common scheme or plan” (emphasis added).
Thus subparagraph (viii) applies only where crimes are committed “as part of the same criminal transaction” and subparagraph (xi) only where they are committed “in separate criminal transactions.” The two subparagraphs are mutually exclusive, and to expand or contract the definition of “criminal transaction” is a zero sum game: the more cases the definition includes, the more cases will fit within subparagraph (viii) and the fewer within subparagraph (xi). The flaw in the majority opinion, I believe, is that it never addresses this aspect of the statute. It discusses at some length another difference between subparagraphs (viii) and (xi)—that the former uses the present tense and the latter the past. But that discussion is irrelevant to my point, which is that the definition of “criminal transaction” affects each subparagraph in a fundamentally opposite way. For that reason the term should, if possible, be defined in a way that gives meaningful scope to both subparagraphs.
The Legislature has left it to the courts to select a definition. It did not define the term “criminal transaction” for purposes of
“‘Criminal transaction’ means conduct which establishes at least one offense, and which is comprised of two or more or a group of acts either (a) so closely related and connected in point of time and circumstance of commission as to constitute a single criminal incident, or (b) so closely related in criminal purpose or objective as to constitute elements or integral parts of a single criminal venture.”
If this definition is adopted,
But it is a mistake, in my view, to include the second half of the CPL definition—acts “so closely related in criminal purpose or objective as to constitute elements or integral parts of a single criminal venture“—when defining “criminal transaction” for
Judges G.B. SMITH, ROSENBLATT and GRAFFEO concur with Judge READ; Judge R.S. SMITH dissents and votes to reverse in a separate opinion in which Chief Judge KAYE and Judge CIPARICK concur.
Order affirmed.