AUBURN - Cayuga County Judge Thomas Leone vacated a Syracuse man's conviction and prison sentence in county court Monday on the grounds that the defendant did not knowingly and intelligently accept a plea deal seven years ago.

Richard Coleman, 45, who has been held in the Clinton Correction Facility since 2001 for an Onondaga County burglary conviction, said he wanted a new trial because he did not know his 18-year Cayuga County prison term was supposed to include a period of post-release supervision. Coleman started serving his Cayuga County sentence this summer after serving time for the Onondaga County case.

In 2001, Coleman pleaded guilty to burglarizing a Cato residence and grand larceny, both felonies, in addition to resisting arrest, a misdemeanor. Coleman has spent most of his life behind bars since he was 16 years old for crimes such as burglary, robbery, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Coleman's lawyer, David Elkovitch, said his client was promised an 18-year prison sentence which never mentioned post-release supervision. When Coleman was sentenced, the judge also failed to add supervision in accordance to the law.

“If a defendant is not informed of a five-year post-release supervision, and they think they are only serving 15 years in prison, they are going to be thinking what's the deal? That's not what I got,” Elkovitch said.

Under New York criminal law, any second felony offender who committed a violent felony crime was supposed to receive post-release supervision in addition to a determinate prison sentence in an attempt to reduce the number of inmates on parole. Several courts failed to add the supervision during sentencing, prompting the state Department of Corrections to add it.

A state court of appeals ruled that DOCS could not impose the supervision, and that only a sentencing judge could make it a part of the punishment.

Because Coleman was told he was supposed to have post-release supervision after he was sentenced, he was entitled to withdraw his guilty plea, Elkovitch said.

“Pretty much, he has to start from square one again,” Elkovitch said. “There will be another arraignment and he will plead not guilty.”

But that's only if Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann does not get Leone's decision overturned by an appeal.

Budelmann believed that because the post-release supervision was a sentencing error, the decision to vacate should have gone to an appellate court and not the county court. But Elkovitch contended that Leone had a right to make a decision because the error really happened when Coleman was offered a faulty plea deal, which allows for the sentence to be vacated in county court.

Instead of vacating the decision, Budelmann had wanted to reduce Coleman's sentence to 15 years, and throw out the post-release supervision altogether in exchange for Coleman dropping his appeal. If Coleman were to take the seven-year-old case to trial, he could receive up to 25 years in prison with five years post-release supervision if he were convicted.

With new state legislation aimed at alleviating the problems associated with judges forgetting to add the post release supervision during the sentencing phase of a case, courts could choose to resentence the defendant, or they could opt to drop the supervision all together, Budelmann said.

“If this goes to trial, it's just going to consume more time and money,” Budelmann said. “We just want to leave it alone, let him go back to prison without the post release supervision.

Staff writer Nate Robson can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 248 or nathan.robson@lee.net