Crime Committee Report e.indd - New York State Senate

The landmark Family Protection and Domestic Violence Intervention Act of 1994 created
a framework to promote a more aggressive response to domestic violence. A statewide computerized
registry was established to expedite communication between Family and Criminal
Courts and law enforcement agencies. Only orders of protection for domestic violence offenses
covered under the statutory definition of family offense, however, are put on the registry. At
least half of the victims of domestic violence are persons outside the statutory definition of
family. Orders of protection and temporary orders of protection issued to protect these victims,
now covered under the 2008 legislation which expanded access to Family Court, should also be
included on the computerized statewide registry.
S.5517 HASSELL-THOMPSON
Commitment Documents
This bill would correct and clarify inconsistent and ambiguous provisions in the Criminal
Procedure Law and the Correction Law pertaining to the timing of the sentencing court’s
obligation to provide state and local correctional facilities and OCFS facilities with commitment
documents, orders of protection and sentencing minutes. It also would make technical
corrections to the statutes to reflect the proper name of the commitment documents that are
used today. First, Criminal Procedure Law § 380.60 identifies a “certificate of conviction” as the
legal document that confers the authority for the execution of sentence and serves as the order
of commitment. In actuality, the technical title of the commitment document is a “sentence
and commitment.” As such, it is appropriate that this section of law, as well as a comparable
provision in Correction Law § 601(a), be amended to include the title of the document that is
routinely used.
Second, Criminal Procedure Law § 380.70 provides that in any case where a person receives
either a determinate or indeterminate sentence of imprisonment, the sentencing minutes must
be transcribed and separately sent to the institution to which the defendant has been delivered
within 30 days of the pronouncement of sentence.
As part of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1995, the Legislature determined that the commitment
document that accompanies an offender to his or her place of incarceration should
contain greater specificity with regard to the crime of commitment. Specifically, it was determined
that the commitment should also indicate, to the extent applicable, the subdivision,
paragraph and subparagraph of the penal law or other statute under which the defendant was
convicted. However, when the Legislature adopted this new requirement in 1995, the provision
was mistakenly inserted into section 380.70, the same section of law that deals with sentencing
minutes. This creates the misimpression that a commitment, like the sentencing minutes, may
be separately delivered to the facility, even though Correction Law § 601(a) and Criminal Procedure
Law § 380.60 make it clear that the commitment document must accompany the defendant
when he or she is delivered to the institution to commence serving his or her sentence of
imprisonment. This error was continued when the law was subsequently expanded to require
orders of protection to be delivered to the institution with a defendant.
The new section of law that explicitly describes the documents that must accompany a defendant
when he or she is delivered to an institution to commence serving a sentence of imprisonment
will clarify the confusion that is caused by the existing, inconsistent statutory language.
This will help to ensure that state and local correctional facilities have the necessary documentation
when receiving offenders into their custody, including documents providing such basic
information as the term of the inmate’s sentence and whether multiple sentences run consecutively
or concurrently.
At the same time, maintaining a separate section of law requiring that courts subsequently
send the sentencing minutes to the facility should help to clarify the courts’ continuing obligations
after a defendant has been sentenced. These minutes assist DOCS and the Division of Parole
with programming and release decisions. They provide additional background about the
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New York State Senate