THE INDICTMENT DID NOT GIVE ADEQUATE NOTICE OF THE PARTICULAR CRIME WITH WHICH DEFENDANT WAS CHARGED (FIRST DEPT).
The First Department, reversing Supreme Court and dismissing the indictment, determined the indictment did not give sufficient notice of the particular crime with which defendant was charged:
The indictment was jurisdictionally defective because it failed to charge defendant with committing a particular crime … . The indictment purported to charge defendant with persistent sexual abuse, a statute that elevates the repeated commission of any of three separately codified misdemeanors to a felony … , but it failed to “specify which of the three discrete qualifying offenses defendant was alleged to have committed” … . Hardware [200 AD3d 431] is dispositive of this appeal … . . In Hardware the indictment alleged that defendant had “subjected an individual to . . . sexual contact.” We held that this allegation was inadequate because ‘sexual contact’ is an element of all three of the qualifying offenses. Therefore, the indictment did not give defendant notice “with sufficient precision to clearly apprise the defendant . . . of the conduct which is the subject of the accusation” (CPL 200.50[7][a] …). The only additional allegation in the indictment in this case is that defendant acted “without the [victim’s] consent.” That allegation similarly failed to specify the underlying crime, because the absence of consent is also an element shared by all three of the qualifying offenses. People v Lacy, 2023 NY Slip Op 02394, First Dept 5-4-23
Practice Point: If it is not clear from the indictment exactly which of several possible crimes is charged, it must be dismissed.