134 AD3d 404
N.Y. App. Div. 1st
2015

People v Faulknor

Appellate Division, First Department

December 1, 2015

2015 NY Slip Op 08774 [134 AD3d 404]

Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. As corrected through Wednesday, February 10, 2016

The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v Fabian Faulknor, Appellant.

Robert S. Dean, Center for Appellate Litigation, New York (Claudia S. Trupp of counsel), for appellant.

Robert T. Johnson, District Attorney, Bronx (Marianne Stracquadanio of counsel), for respondent.

Judgments, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Judith Lieb, J.), rendered June 25, 2013, convicting defendant, upon his pleas of guilty, of murder in the second degree and assault in the second degree and sentencing him to an aggregate term of 22 years to life, unanimously affirmed.

Defendant‘s unpreserved challenges to the validity of his plea do not come within the narrow exception to the preservation requirement (see People v Lopez, 71 NY2d 662, 665 [1988]), and we decline to review them in the interest of justice. As an alternative holding, we find that the plea was knowing, intelligent and voluntary. The record fails to support defendant‘s assertion that the sentencing court‘s remarks violated the plea agreement (see e.g. People v Jeffrey, 254 AD2d 230 [1st Dept 1998], lv denied 92 NY2d 1033 [1998]). Unlike the situation in People v Mox (20 NY3d 936 [2012]), there was nothing in the actual plea allocution that triggered a duty to inquire into an potential insanity defense, and the fact that there had been proceedings under CPL article 730, which had established defendant‘s competency, did not trigger such a duty of inquiry.

Regardless of whether defendant made a valid appeal waiver, we perceive no basis for reducing the sentence. Concur—Mazzarelli, J.P., Moskowitz, Richter and Manzanet-Daniels, JJ.