stein, 56 AD3d at 68), even when respondent District Attorney
is authorized to delegate the prosecution to respondent Police
Department (People v Soddano, 86 NY2d at 728), that author-
ity must yield to avoid the conflict. (People v Zimmer, 51 NY2d
at 394.) That potential readily arises in determining who are
to be targets of criminal charges, for what offenses, whether to
enter a plea bargain, and on what terms, all determinations in
which the prosecutor exercises considerable and unsupervised
discretion. (Young v United States ex rel. Vuitton et Fils S. A.,
481 US at 806-807, 813.) If respondent District Attorney
himself required defendants’ release from civil liability of the
Police Department or officers in exchange for dismissal of the
charges, a consideration ‘‘unrelated to the merits of the People’s
MATTER OF JEFFRYES v VANCE [58 Misc 3d 185] 195
case,’’ and not within the prosecutor’s duties, that conduct
would violate ‘‘[t]he prosecutor’s obligation . . . to represent
the People and to that end, to exercise independent judgment
in deciding to prosecute or refrain from prosecution. This
obligation cannot be fulfilled when the prosecutor undertakes
also to represent a police officer for reasons divorced from any
criminal justice concern.’’ (Cowles v Brownell, 73 NY2d at 386-
387 [emphasis added].) Respondents have not shown why the
result is any different when the District Attorney delegates
prosecutorial functions.
IV. Disposition of the Pending Motions
Because petitioners plead viable claims within this court’s
subject matter jurisdiction, the court denies respondents’ mo-
tions to dismiss the petition based on CPLR 3211 (a) (2) and
(7). That subject matter jurisdiction, giving the court authority
to adjudicate those claims, however, is premised in part on this