Opinion
September 28, 1992
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Friedmann, J.).
Ordered that the amended sentences are vacated, on the law, and the sentences imposed on June 25, 1987, are reinstated in their entirety.
The defendant contends that the Supreme Court erred in amending the original legal sentences which, although imposed nearly three years earlier, had never commenced. We agree. The Criminal Procedure Law is silent on the power of the court to change a legal sentence prior to the commencement of the term or period of the sentence (see, People v Ozarowski, 87 Misc.2d 607; People v Piela, 79 Misc.2d 885, 887), but it is settled law that "the court has power, within definitely prescribed limits, to reconsider its judgment and to vacate, modify or amend it by reducing or increasing a sentence imposed" provided that such power is "exercised at the term or session of the court at which the judgment was pronounced" (Matter of Cedar, 240 App. Div. 182, 186, affd 265 N.Y. 620). At bar, however, the term of the court at which the original sentences were pronounced had clearly ended (see, 22 22 NYCRR 200.2 [a]), and the Supreme Court thus lacked authority to modify the sentences it had legally imposed on June 25, 1987 (see, Matter of Cedar, supra; People v White, 121 A.D.2d 762; cf., People v Bellamy, 160 A.D.2d 886). Mangano, P.J., Harwood, Eiber, Copertino and Santucci, JJ., concur.