RECORD IMPOUNDED

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-3974-15T4

STATE OF NEW JERSEY,

Plaintiff-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 Prosecutor, on the 

brief).

PER CURIAM

Defendant Charles DiGregorio appeals a March 29, 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NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE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." 

Although 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, 2017
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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, 2010." The amendment, made as a result of information 

volunteered by defendant and at his request, corrected the date

range in which the images were created to between 1994 and 2001. 

The grand jury 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 photographs of her, while she was fully clothed. The 

pornographic photos were created later when defendant manipulated 

the images so as to make it appear H.C. was nude or partially 

nude. 

The court and counsel extensively discussed the applicable

statute of limitations during the course of the entry of 
3 A-3974-15T4

defendant's guilty plea. Eventually, counsel 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). 

The 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 offense 

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 On June 13, 

2013, in accord with the plea, defendant was sentenced to a sixand-a-half year term of imprisonment, with a 589-day jail credit 

for time already served. The 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, defendant 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 the 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. 
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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 JUDGMENT OF CONVICTION AGAINST DIGREGORIO 

MUST BE DECLARED VOID AND SET ASIDE BECAUSE 

THE STATE FAILED TO ESTABLISH THAT THE 

INDICTMENT WAS FILED WITHIN THE STATUTE OF 

LIMITATIONS.

A petition for PCR is cognizable where a defendant alleges 

that the statute 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 defendant'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 impact statement, she is not interested in pursuing the 

prosecution. Thus defendant urges us to find that the court lacked

jurisdiction to sentence him. The arguments 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 informed 
5 A-3974-15T4

about them by someone else is irrelevant. She clearly first 

learned of their existence in December 2011, when interviewed by 

law enforcement. The statute criminalizes the photographing of a 

child "in a prohibited sexual act or in the simulation of such an 

act," and criminalizes 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. Later defendant manipulated these images so 

as to depict nudity and shared those manipulated images with at 

least one other person on the internet. The discovery of the 

photos by law enforcement and the victim in 2011 makes that year 

the baseline 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. Therefore, the indictment fell well within the two years 

of H.C.'s discovery of the crime, and the prosecution thus falls 

within the two years permitted by the statute. 

Affirmed.