Suppose the State is prosecuting a defendant for the sexual assault of a young child. Though the child has been identified by name in the arrest warrant and investigative reports provided to the defendant, the State would prefer not to name the victim in the indictment. May it refer to the victim in that document as “Victim #1”? No. The state supreme court held in State v. White, ___ N.C. ___, 827 S.E.2d 80 (May 10, 2019), that an indictment alleging a sex offense with a child under 13 must name the child. The White court determined that the phrase “Victim #1” did not name the child as the phrase did not distinguish the victim from other children or victims. And the court rejected the notion that the identification of the victim in other documents related to the case, including the arrest warrant and the original indictment, cured the flaw in the superseding indictment that referred to the minor victim only as “Victim #1.” A court may not, it explained, look to extrinsic evidence to supplement a missing or deficient allegation in an indictment. A matter of statutory interpretation. The White court based its analysis on the short-form indictment provisions in G.S. 15-144.2(b), which expressly call for “naming the child.” G.S. 15-144.2(a) and (c) likewise require that indictments for other sex offenses name the victim. And a companion statute, G.S. 15-144.1, requires that short form indictments for rape state the name of the victim. Thus, under the rational in White, an [...]
Faculty Coordinators
