People v. Venson

In People v. Venson, 47 Misc 3d 92, 10 N.Y.S.3d 792, 2015 WL 753338 (App. Term 1st Dept. 2015) the defendant gave the complainant, who was his neighbor, two gifts of common household items, which were not unwelcome. The first was one month after they met and the second was some three months after the first. Id. Eighteen months later, the defendant followed the defendant into her laundry room and asked her to remove her television from her window because it was keeping him awake, at which point the complainant told the defendant to leave her alone. Id. That same month, the complainant learned of the existence of nude pictures that the defendant had taken of her; defendant told the police that he was planning to show them to the complainant's co-op board as proof she was "enticing" him. Id. The Appellate Term dismissed, concluding that "the infrequent and temporally diffuse contact with the complainant that defendant allegedly initiated, spread out over a period spanning nearly two years, did not make out a course of conduct' as that term is used in the statute, viz., a series of acts evidencing a continuity of purpose.'" Id. But Venson ultimately turned, not on the number of acts or the length of time over which they occurred, but on the lack of a common purpose among the acts alleged. The appellate court could see no clear connection between the defendant's "ambiguous" and "unexcepted to" gift-giving and his much later effort to let the complainant know that her television was making too much noise. Id.