Opinion
2006-1256 W CR.
Decided June 29, 2009.
Appeal from judgments of the City Court of Mount Vernon, Westchester County (Adam Seiden, J.), rendered June 29, 2006. The judgments, insofar as appealed from by defendants Neville Douglas and Delores Douglas as limited by their brief, upon convicting said defendants, upon their pleas of guilty, of violating various building code and fire code provisions, sentenced defendant Neville Douglas to, inter alia, 12 consecutive conditional discharges, each containing the conditions that he refrain from doing business in the City of Mount Vernon and from owning rental properties therein, and sentenced defendant Delores Douglas to, inter alia, 5 consecutive conditional discharges, each containing similar conditions. The judgments also convicted defendants Golden Springs Corp. and Errol Ferguson, upon their pleas of guilty, of violating various building code and fire code provisions.
Judgments, insofar as appealed from by defendants Neville Douglas and Delores Douglas, modified, on the law, by vacating so much of the sentences as provided that the conditional discharges run consecutively and substituting therefor the provision that they run concurrently; as so modified, affirmed.
Appeal, insofar as taken by defendants Golden Springs Corp. and Errol Ferguson, dismissed as abandoned.
PRESENT: RUDOLPH, P.J., TANENBAUM and NICOLAI, JJ.
Multiple judgments were rendered convicting defendants of violating various building code and fire code provisions in connection with their rental of properties to tenants in the City of Mount Vernon. The sentences included the imposition of fines, civil penalties and conditional discharges. Although a notice of appeal was filed on behalf of all of the defendants, an appellants' brief has been submitted only on behalf of Neville Douglas and Delores Douglas (defendants), in which they only challenge so much of their sentences as imposed, as conditions of their conditional discharges, that they refrain from doing business in the City of Mount Vernon and own no rental property there.
The City Court was without authority ( see Matter of Pirro v Angiolillo, 89 NY2d 351, 356 n 4 [1996]; Matter of Johnson v Price, 28 AD3d 79, 83-84) to impose consecutive conditional discharges on defendants Neville Douglas and Delores Douglas. Penal Law § 65.15 (1) expressly states that "a period or additional period of conditional discharge commences on the day it is imposed" and, moreover, that "[m]ultiple periods, whether imposed at the same or at different times, shall run concurrently." Thus, the conditional discharges should have been made to commence on the date of sentencing itself ( see People v Barnett, 232 AD2d 170 [involving a similar analysis with respect to a sentence of probation]), expire one year thereafter (Penal Law § 65.05 [b]) and run concurrently.
Accordingly, the judgments are modified by providing that the conditional discharges contained in the sentences of defendants Neville Douglas and Delores Douglas are concurrent rather than consecutive. The appeal, insofar as taken by defendants Golden Springs Corp. and Errol Ferguson, is dismissed as abandoned.
We do not pass upon the merits of the other issues raised on this appeal since, in light of the expiration of more than one year since the imposition of the subject conditional discharges, they have been rendered academic.
Rudolph, P.J., Tanenbaum and Nicolai, JJ., concur.