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N.Y. CPL Law § 470.20

This is the official text of N.Y. CPL Law § 470.20, part of New York’s CPL Law — part of the compiled statutory law of New York, published by the state as "CPL Law." Browse the sections below, each linked to its official government source.

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Determination of appeals by intermediate appellate courts; corrective action upon reversal or modification

Official statutory text

§ 470.20 Determination of appeals by intermediate appellate courts;\n corrective action upon reversal or modification.\n Upon reversing or modifying a judgment, sentence or order of a\ncriminal court, an intermediate appellate court must take or direct such\ncorrective action as is necessary and appropriate both to rectify any\ninjustice to the appellant resulting from the error or defect which is\nthe subject of the reversal or modification and to protect the rights of\nthe respondent. The particular corrective action to be taken or\ndirected is governed in part by the following rules:\n 1. Upon a reversal of a judgment after trial for error or defect\nwhich resulted in prejudice to the defendant or deprived him of a fair\ntrial, the court must, whether such reversal be on the law or as a\nmatter of discretion in the interest of justice, order a new trial of\nthe accusatory instrument and remit the case to the criminal court for\nsuch action.\n 2. Upon a reversal of a judgment after trial for legal insufficiency\nof trial evidence, the court must dismiss the accusatory instrument.\n 3. Upon a modification of a judgment after trial for legal\ninsufficiency of trial evidence with respect to one or more but not all\nof the offenses of which the defendant was convicted, the court must\ndismiss the count or counts of the accusatory instrument determined to\nbe legally unsupported and must otherwise affirm the judgment. In such\ncase, it must either reduce the total sentence to that imposed by the\ncriminal court upon the counts with respect to which the judgment is\naffirmed or remit the case to the criminal court for re-sentence upon\nsuch counts; provided that nothing contained in this paragraph precludes\nfurther sentence reduction in the exercise of the appellate court's\ndiscretion pursuant to subdivision six.\n 4. Upon a modification of a judgment after trial which reduces a\nconviction of a crime to one for a lesser included offense, the court\nmust remit the case to the criminal court with a direction that the\nlatter sentence the defendant accordingly.\n 5. Upon a reversal or modification of a judgment after trial upon the\nground that the verdict, either in its entirety or with respect to a\nparticular count or counts, is against the weight of the trial evidence,\nthe court must dismiss the accusatory instrument or any reversed count.\n 6. Upon modifying a judgment or reversing a sentence as a matter of\ndiscretion in the interest of justice upon the ground that the sentence\nis unduly harsh or severe, the court must itself impose some legally\nauthorized lesser sentence.\n

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.