People v. Perez

OPINION OF THE COURT

Stanley Gartenstein, J.

We have no choice but to hold herein that a battered spouse, who has validly exercised her* statutory election to prosecute an assault in the criminal courts as opposed to the Family Court, may nevertheless be nonsuited in the court validly elected by virtue of her own subsequent legally inconsistent act. The very nature of this holding again underscores the continuing truism that battered spouses often make uninformed decisions because statutory admonitions which should make clear their alternatives are often not given or given in a perfunctory,…