People v Sanabria

People v Sanabria 2010 NY Slip Op 03238 [72 AD3d 552] April 22, 2010 Appellate Division, First Department Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431. As corrected through Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
v
Rafael Sanabria, Appellant.

—[*1] Richard M. Greenberg, Office of the Appellate Defender, New York (Margaret E. Knight of counsel), for appellant.

Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New York (Patricia Curran of counsel), for respondent.

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Budd G. Goodman, J.), rendered December 12, 2005, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of rape in the first degree, criminal sexual act in the first degree, and two counts of sexual abuse in the first degree, and sentencing him to an aggregate term of 21 years, unanimously reversed, on the law, and the matter remanded for a new trial.

The trial court erred in precluding the defense from investigating the complainant's prior claims of molestation by her doctors. If proven to be false, these claims could have been used to challenge the mentally ill witness's veracity as to her account of what happened here (see People v Hunter, 11 NY3d 1 [2008]). Under the facts of this case, this error cannot be deemed harmless. Concur—Friedman, J.P., Catterson, Acosta, DeGrasse and Abdus-Salaam, JJ.