II. The Relief Petitioners Seek
As long as petitioners may raise and receive an adjudication
of the unlawful delegation of prosecutorial authority and the
delegee prosecutors’ impermissible conflict of interest in
petitioners’ criminal prosecutions, this court may not prohibit
the prosecutions or the adjudication of those issues there, nor
determine them for purposes of the criminal actions. (Cayuga
Indian Nation of N.Y. v Gould, 14 NY3d at 633-634; Mor-
genthau v Erlbaum, 59 NY2d at 147, 149; Steingut v Gold, 42
NY2d at 315; see Hurrell-Harring v State of New York, 15 NY3d
at 16.) Although the determinations in the criminal actions
were adverse to petitioners, ‘‘in the event of a conviction,’’ they
may appeal those adverse determinations. (Cayuga Indian Na-
tion of N.Y. v Gould, 14 NY3d at 634; see Dondi v Jones, 40
NY2d at 13-14.)
If petitioners are not convicted, however, they will have suf-
fered prosecutions that they no longer may contest through an
appeal of those determinations. At that point, the evidentiary
record will have expanded, potentially to show more fully
whether or not the delegation was unlawful and entailed an
impermissible conflict and what harms petitioners have suf-
fered as a result: a record different from the one on which the
Criminal Court based its determinations. (See Hurrell-Harring
v State of New York, 15 NY3d at 17-18; Matter of Schumer v
Holtzman, 60 NY2d 46, 56 [1983].) At that point or, if petition-
ers are convicted, but the Appellate Term reverses the convic-
tions, petitioners may be entitled to a determination of respon-
dents’ liability for those harms (Morgenthau v Erlbaum, 59
NY2d at 147-148; Dondi v Jones, 40 NY2d at 14), and the
amount of petitioners’ damages, even if only incidental to the