BILL NUMBER:  S871

 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 :

Section 1: Amends subdivision 1 of section 130.00 of 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.

Commonsense 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 :

2015,2016: S.2997 Referred to Codes
2014: S.4896 Committee Discharged and Committed to Rules
2013: S.4896 Referred to Codes

 FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS :

None.

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