NY Court of Appeals reverses manslaughter conviction

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New York state’s highest court has reversed a homicide conviction because the judge failed to properly resolve a defendant’s request for a new attorney.

Defendant Anton Kelley pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in June 2022 before state Supreme Court Justice Gordon J. Cuffy, in Onondaga County.

In the middle of a trial where he was facing a murder charge and a potential life sentence, if convicted, Kelley accepted a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge and a 14-year sentence.

Kelley appealed to the the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, Fourth Department, which affirmed the conviction.

“Contrary to defendant’s contention, the record establishes that he validly waived his right to appeal,” the Fourth Department ruled in a June 2025 decision.

Kelley’s appellate attorney, Casey S. Duffy, argued that Cuffy failed to make an appropriate inquiry into Kelley’s requests for a new trial lawyer.

“We conclude that defendant abandoned his requests when he decided to plead guilty while still being represented by the same attorneys,” the Fourth Department ruled.

During the plea proceeding, Kelley did not express dissatisfaction with defense counsel, the Fourth Department noted.

Duffy also argued that Kelley did not receive effective assistance of counsel.

That argument did not survive his guilty plea or waiver of the right to appeal “because there was no showing that the plea bargaining process was infected by (the) allegedly ineffective assistance or that defendant entered the plea because of his attorneys’ allegedly poor performance,” the Fourth Department ruled.

Kelley appealed to the New York State Court of Appeals, which the conviction and sent the case back to the Fourth Department.

During the oral argument at the Fourth Department, Duffy argued that the trial court erred by failing to make an appropriate inquiry into Kelley’s requests for new counsel.

The Appellate Division held that Kelley’s appeal waiver barred review “except to the extent that the contention implicates the voluntariness of the plea.”

The Fourth Department also held that, to the extent that the defense contention implicates the voluntariness of the plea, “we conclude that defendant abandoned his requests when he decided to plead guilty while still being represented by the same attorneys.”

“Because defendant did not abandon his voluntariness claim, on remittal, the Appellate Division should resolve it on the merits.  Defendant’s dissatisfaction with counsel and Supreme Court’s handling of his requests for new counsel are relevant on remittal only, as the Appellate Division held, to the extent they affect the voluntariness of defendant’s plea,” the Court of Appeals ruled.

“The Fourth Department’s holding, the most recent in a line of cases to the same effect, is wrong for several reasons,” the Court of Appeals wrote.

First, the voluntariness of a plea survives even a valid appeal waiver, the court wrote.

“A challenge to voluntariness cannot be extinguished because the same counsel about whom a defendant has complained, unsuccessfully, continued to represent the defendant at plea and sentencing,” the court wrote.

Second, these circumstances do not constitute waiver of defendant’s voluntariness claim.

“Waiver occurs when a defendant intentionally and voluntarily relinquishes or abandons a known right that would otherwise survive a guilty plea,” the court wrote.

“Here, the fact that defendant pleaded guilty while represented by the same attorneys does not evince an intentional choice to abandon review of the voluntariness of his plea,” the panel wrote.

Duffy argued that the guilty plea was an effort to mitigate the harm resulting from the court’s denial of his request for new counsel, not an abandonment of his request.

“To the extent that the Appellate Division relied on the fact that, during the plea colloquy, defendant did not renew his complaints about counsel, his silence does not indicate waiver,” the court wrote.

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