Senate Bill S4896

                                BILL NUMBER:S4896

TITLE OF BILL:  An act to amend the penal law, in relation to the
definition of the term "sexual intercourse" as such term applies to
sex offenses

PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:

To amend the penal law to redefine rape as any contact between the
penis and vagina or vulva.

SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS:

The Act amends the penal law by defining rape as conduct between
persons consisting of contact between the penis and the vagina or
vulva.

EFFECTS OF PRESENT LAW WHICH THIS BILL WOULD ALTER:

Clarifies Rape in the First, Second and Third Degrees.

JUSTIFICATION:

On March 28, 2012, a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court
declared a mistrial on the rape charge against former New York City
Police Officer Michael Pena. Pena was convicted of several other
              

charges for holding the schoolteacher at gunpoint, threatening her
life and forcibly sodomizing her. Pena was not convicted of rape
despite overwhelming evidence of forcible, non-consensual sexual
conduct with a Bronx schoolteacher. It is galling that in the face of
evidence of the defendant's semen in the victim's underwear, redness
to her genitals, eyewitness testimony and the victim's own account of
the pain of the attack, Pena was not convicted of the top count of
rape.

Common sense dictates that what happened to the victim in this case is
rape.

This bill will redefine sexual intercourse as an element in the crime
of rape as any contact between the penis and the vagina or vulva,
rather than the current definition which requires penetration.

PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

This is a new bill.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:

None.

EFFECTIVE DATE:

This act shall take effect ninety days after it shall have become a
law.