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People v. Cassidy, 40 N.Y.2d 763, 358 N.E.2d 870, 390 N.Y.S.2d 45

Facts

In three separate cases, defendants were convicted of various crimes including assault, attempted sexual abuse, and kidnapping. In each instance, the acts constituting kidnapping were closely tied to the commission of other crimes, such as robbery and sexual assault. The court examined the circumstances of each case, noting that the abductions were not independent acts but rather integral to the commission of the other offenses.

In Cassidy a young woman was walking home in the early evening after having attended classes at Brooklyn College. Defendant grabbed her from the rear and dragged her at knifepoint some 70 feet into a garage where he sought to assault her sexually.

Issue

Whether the merger doctrine survived the 1967 Revision of the Penal Law with respect to kidnapping in the second degree, and if so, what the consequences of its application were in the three cases before the court.

The issue now before us is whether that so-called merger doctrine survived the 1967 Revision of the Penal Law with respect to kidnapping in the second degree under new section 135.20 of that law, and if so what should to the consequence of its application to the three cases now before us.

Rule

The merger doctrine precludes conviction for kidnapping based on acts that are so much a part of another substantive crime that the latter could not have been committed without such acts, and independent criminal responsibility cannot fairly be attributed to them.

The merger doctrine was of judicial origin and was based on an aversion to prosecuting a defendant on a kidnapping charge in order to expose him to the heavier penalty thereby made available, where the period of abduction was brief, the criminal enterprise in its entirety appeared as no more than an offense of robbery or rape, and there was lacking a genuine ‘kidnapping’ flavor.

Analysis

The court applied the merger doctrine to the facts of the case by determining that in each instance, the acts of abduction were not independent but rather served as incidental means to facilitate the commission of the underlying crimes. The court found that the nature of the abductions did not rise to the level of a separately cognizable offense, as they were integral to the commission of assault and sexual abuse.

We turn then to the cases before us, in none of which was the means or manner of the detention such as to invoke the exception to the merger rule.

Conclusion

The court affirmed the decisions of the Appellate Division in each case, holding that the merger doctrine precluded separate convictions for kidnapping in the second degree.

Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed in each of the three cases.

Who won?

The defendants prevailed in the case as the court affirmed the Appellate Division's decisions to reverse the kidnapping convictions, reasoning that the acts of abduction were not independent of the other crimes.

We agree with the Appellate Division that there was here no independent abduction; the detention of the victim was incidental to the commission of the crimes of assault and attempted sexual abuse.

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