THE OMISSION OF THE TIME AND PLACE OF THE OFFENSE FROM THE SUPERIOR COURT INFORMATION WAS NOT A JURISDICTIONAL DEFECT AND ANY ERRORS WERE FORFEITED BY THE GUILTY PLEA (THIRD DEPT).
The Third Department determined that the failure to include the time and place of the crime in the superior court information (SCI) was not a jurisdictional defect and any errors were forfeited by the guilty plea:
… [D]efendant contends that the waiver of indictment and SCI omitted essential information required by CPL 195.20, rendering the waiver of indictment invalid and the SCI jurisdictionally defective. In support of this claim, defendant points to the fact that neither the waiver of indictment nor the SCI sets forth the approximate time of the crime, and the waiver of indictment also failed to set forth the place where it occurred. While we acknowledge these deficiencies, we do not find that they mandate dismissal of the SCI and reversal of the judgment of conviction given our recent decisions in People v Shindler (179 AD3d 1306, 1307 [2020]) and People v Elric YY., (179 AD3d 1304, 1305 [2020]), and the Court of Appeals’ decision in People v Lang (___ NY3d ___, ___, 2019 NY Slip Op 08545, *7-9 [2019]). As is relevant here, the Court of Appeals found in Lang that the date, approximate time and place of the crime in the waiver of indictment constituted non-elemental factual information, the omission of which did not amount to a jurisdictional defect (see People v Lang, 2020 NY Slip Op 08545 at *8-9). In view of this decision, we abandoned the standard enunciated in People v Busch-Scardino (166 AD3d 1314 [2018]) and concluded in Shindler and Elric YY. that the omission of the approximate time and place was not a jurisdictional defect rendering the waiver of indictment invalid.
Here, defendant was provided adequate notice of the crime charged based upon a reading of the waiver of indictment and the SCI together … , as well as the felony complaint, which set forth in detail the nature of the crime and the approximate time and place where it occurred … . Significantly, defendant did not raise any objection to the sufficiency of the waiver of indictment or the SCI before County Court, or demand a bill of particulars. Therefore, the subject omissions are nonjurisdictional defects that were forfeited by defendant’s guilty plea … .People v Morgan-Smith, 2020 NY Slip Op 02501, Third Dept 4-30-20