PEOPLE v AMBROSIO

Holding The Court held that trial counsel was not ineffective for failing to request a jury charge defining drug impairment based on People v Caden N., because the legal standard was not clearly established for the specific charges at the time of trial. The majority reasoned that Caden N. was limited to vehicular manslaughter and the model jury instructions had not yet been updated to reflect that decision.

The court’s words

counsel is not ineffective when the success of the argument the defendant claims should have been made by counsel depended on the resolution of novel questions

45 NY3d 646, at the official text

the mistake, if it was one, was not the sort of egregious and prejudicial error that amounts to a deprivation of the constitutional right to counsel

45 NY3d 646, at the official text

Caden N. did not explicitly discuss whether the standard for impairment for purposes of a prosecution for [vehicular] manslaughter in the second degree was also the standard to be applied in a prosecution for only VTL 1192(4)

45 NY3d 646, at the official text