People v. Stephens

In my view, what I regard as the majority’s all too wooden reading of the procedural statutes loses sight of both the spirit and intent of section 60.09 of the Penal Law. Moreover, such an over literal application of the procedural law to as constitutionally consequential a matter as the one before us now runs counter to the jurisprudential elasticity of which we have found ourselves capable in analogous situations.

I begin with CPL 440.20 which provides the mechanism for setting aside a sentence. It was designed to replace the “former recognized but uncodified — and unappealable — ‘motion for…