The Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the defendant’s conviction for failure to comply with Subchapter I registration requirements. In 2011, the defendant pleaded to one count of abduction with sexual motivation in an Ohio court. The court required him to register as a Tier II sex offender under Ohio’s laws for 25 years. In 2019, the defendant moved to Pennsylvania, and Subway hired him to make hoagies. In 2020, Subway fired him, but the defendant did not report his termination of employment as required under the sexual offender notification law. The Commonwealth filed a criminal complaint for one count of failure to comply with registration requirements under 18 Pa.C.S. § 4915.1(a)(1). After the Commonwealth’s case-in-chief, defense counsel moved for judgment of acquittal on the grounds that the Commonwealth charged the wrong subsection of the statute. The Commonwealth then moved the court to amend the information to change the crime charged from 18 Pa.C.S. § 4915.1 to 18 Pa.C.S. § 4915.2. The court granted the Commonwealth’s motion to amend, denied the motion for judgment of acquittal, and found the defendant guilty. He appealed, and the Superior Court affirmed. First, the defendant argued that the trial court erred by allowing the Commonwealth to amend the information after it rested its case-in-chief. The Court ruled that the trial court did not abuse its discretion because the defendant had notice of the facts surrounding the amended information and was not prejudiced by the amendment. Next, the defendant argued that his violation of Section 4915.2 was de minimis because his arrest occurred only five days after the deadline to notify the police had expired. The Court disagreed and noted that the trial court was not obligated to accept the defendant’s explanation that his failure to comply with the registration requirements was because of the pandemic.
