## RECORD IMPOUNDED

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY APPELLATE DIVISION DOCKET NO . A - 3974
- 15T4 STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintif f
- Respondent,

v. CHARLES DIGREGORIO,
Defendant
- Appellant.
Submitted September 6, 2017

– Decided Before Judges Alvarez and Gooden Brown. On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Hunterdon County, Indictment No. 12
- 05
- 0229. Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney for appellant (David J. Reich, Designated Counsel, on the briefs). Anthony P. Kearns, III, Hunterdon County Prosecutor, attorney for respondent (Jeffrey L. Weinstein, Assistant Prose cutor, on the brief).
PER CURIAM Defendant Charles DiGregorio appeals a March 2 9 , 2016 Law Division Order denying his petition for Post
- Conviction Relief (PCR). He appeals, and we affirm. NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court . " A lthough it is posted on the internet , this opinion is binding only on the parties in the case and its use in other cases is limited . R .1:36
- 3.

September 21, 20172 A - 3974
- 15T4

Defendant entered a guilty plea to an amended charge of
Second
- Degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child, N.J.S.A. 2C:24
- 4 ( b ) (4). The original indictment alleged defendant created certain pornographic images of H.C., a child under the age of 16,
"on or about diverse dates between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 20 10." The amendment, made as a result of information
volunteered b y defendant and at his request , correct ed the date range in which the images were created to between 1994 and 2001.
The g rand j ury issued the indictment on May 24, 2012. The images were found on October 24, 2011, when , during the course of an unrelated investigation in another state, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found nude photographs of H.C. on
the suspect's computer. The pictures had been emailed from defendant's computer. A search warrant was executed at defendant's home on November 2, 2011. The authorities met with H.C. on December 6, 2011. She explained that when she was a child, defendant had taken professional photograph s of her, while she was fully clothed. The
p ornographic photos were created later when d efendant manipulated the images so as to make it appear H.C. was nude or partially
nude.
T he court and counsel extensively discussed the applicable statute of limitations during the course of the entry of3 A - 3974
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defendant's guilty plea . Eventually, c ounsel agreed on
defendant 's behalf that the prosecution was begun within two years of discovery of the crime. Because the indictment issued soon after the discovery of the photographs , and of H.C. learning of their existence, the court was satisfied that the indictment did not violate the time limitations found in N.J.S.A. 2C:1
- 6 ( b ) (4).
Th e statute reads that a prosecution for a N.J.S.A. 2C:24
- 4 offense must be commenced, assuming the victim at the time of the offen se was below the age of 18, "within five years of the victim 's attaining the age of 18 or within two years of the discovery of the offense by the victim, whichever is later[.]" 1 O n June 13, 2013, in accord with the plea, defendant was sentenced to a six
a nd
- a - half year t erm of imprisonment, with a 589
- day jail credit for time already served . T he remaining he served at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center. See N.J.S.A. 2C:47
- 3 . Megan's Law applied to the offense. See N.J.S.A. 2C:7
- 11 . In his PCR petition, d efen d ant argued that the statute of limitations barred prosecution in his case. He contended then,
as he does now on appeal, that because H.C. learned about the photos only when t he authorities informed her of their existence , she did not "discover" them, and thus no prosecution could proceed.

1 H.C. was born October 11, 1988. The indictment was handed down when she was 23 years old.4 A - 3974
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He claims that she cannot be considered a "victim" from the manner in which she found out about the doctored photos. The statute of limitations argument is defendant's only point on appeal:

THE J UDGMENT OF CONVICTION AGAINST DIGREGORIO MUST BE DECLARED VOID AND SET ASIDE BECAUSE THE STATE FAILED TO ESTABLISH THAT THE INDICTMENT WAS FILED WITHIN THE STAT UT E OF LIMITATIONS. A petition for PCR is cognizable where a defendant alleges
that the statut e of limitations has run and therefore the court lacked the legal authority to convict and sentence. See R. 3:22
- 2(b) ("A petition for [PCR] is cognizable if based upon . . . [l]ack of jurisdiction of the court to impose the judgment rendered upon defenda nt's conviction[.]) . In addition to the statute of limitations argument, although not by way of separate points,
defendant contends that no "discovery" of the crime occurred, and since the victim did not appear at sentencing or send in a written victim im pact statement, she is not interested in pursuing the prosecution . Thus defendant urges us to find that the court lack ed jurisdiction to sentence him. The argument s lack sufficient merit to warrant much discussion in a written opinion. See R. 2:11
- (e)(2 ).
That the photographs were brought to H.C .'s attention by the authorities does not mean she did not "discover" the crime. Whether she came upon the photographs on her own or was informed5 A - 3974
- 15T4

about them by someone else is irrelevant. S he clearly first
l earned of their existence in December 2011 , when interviewed by
law enforcement. The statute criminalize s the photographing of a child "in a prohibited sexual act or in the simulation of such an
act , " and criminal izes the use of a device, here a computer, to "reproduce or reconstruct the image of a child in a prohibited sexual act or in the simulation of such an act." The original images were innocent

– they were images of a fully
- clothed child. L ater defendant manipulate d the se images so

as to depict nudity and shared those manipulated images with at
least one other person on the internet. Th e discovery of the photos by law enforcement and the victim in 2011 makes that year
the bas eline for calculating the running of the statute, as opposed to the years in which defendant claims he first engaged in the activity. Defendant was indicted on May 24, 2012, months after the FBI learned about the crime and the authorities met with the victim. Th erefore , the indictment fell well within the two year s of H.C.'s discovery of the crime , and the prosecution thus falls within the two years permitted by the statute . Affirmed.