Transitional exception to determinate sentencing laws · as in force on May 31, 2026
§ 70.85 Transitional exception to determinate sentencing laws.
This section shall apply only to cases in which a determinate sentence was imposed between September first, nineteen hundred ninety-eight, and the effective date of this section, and was required by law to include a term of post-release supervision, but the court did not explicitly state such a term when pronouncing sentence. When such a case is again before the court pursuant to section six hundred one-d of the correction law or otherwise, for consideration of whether to resentence, the court may, notwithstanding any other provision of law but only on consent of the district attorney, re-impose the originally imposed determinate sentence of imprisonment without any term of post-release supervision, which then shall be deemed a lawful sentence.
A cleanup rule for determinate sentences imposed from September 1, 1998 until this section took effect, where post-release supervision was required but the judge never said so at sentencing. When such a case returns to court for possible resentencing, the court may, only with the District Attorney's consent, re-impose the same prison term with no PRS, and that sentence is then lawful. ★
Marked in the text: penalties, time limits, sums of money. Editorial emphasis added by this edition; it does not appear in the statute as enacted.
This provision appears in Volume 1 — The Court Clerk in Plain English; Volume 4 — The Court Clerk: Penal Law; Volume 1 — The Court Officer in Plain English; Volume 3 — The Court Officer: Penal Law; Volume 3 — Your Career: Penal Law in Plain English.