Opinion
December 29, 1961
Present — Bergan, P.J., Coon, Herlihy, Reynolds and Taylor, JJ.
Appeal by relator from an order of the Clinton County Court which dismissed a writ of habeas corpus. On January 20, 1941 relator was sentenced by the Court of General Sessions of the County of New York as a second felony offender to an indeterminate term of from 10 to 20 years upon a conviction of burglary, third degree, upon his admission that he had been previously convicted of the same crime in the same court on April 10, 1935. The petition for a writ of habeas corpus is based on the failure of the Clerk at the time of the 1935 conviction to ask him, pursuant to section 480 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, whether he had any legal cause to show why judgment should not be pronounced against him. We have frequently stated that the failure of compliance does not vitiate the judgment of conviction. The 1935 conviction was properly considered in sentencing the relator as a second offender in 1941. ( People ex rel. Bombard v. McMann, 8 A.D.2d 663; People ex rel. Koehler v. La Vallee, 8 A.D.2d 905; People ex rel. Smith v. La Vallee, 12 A.D.2d 569.) Order unanimously affirmed, without costs.