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Prosecutor Won't Seek New Abuse Charges
The Bronx District Attorney yesterday dismissed a sex-abuse case against a former day-care teacher whose conviction on rape and sodomy charges was overturned by the state's highest court in May.
The teacher, Franklin Beauchamp, 31 years old, was convicted of nine counts of rape, sexual abuse and sodomy involving three children at Praca, a city-operated day-care center in the Bronx.
He was serving 25 to 75 years at the Clinton Correctional Facility at Dannemora, N.Y., when the State Court of Appeals ruled that the indictment used to obtain his 1986 conviction was ''duplicitous,'' or not specific enough.
At the time, Mr. Beauchamp's lawyer, Joel Rudin, said his client did not commit the crimes.
Ed McCarthy, a spokesman for Bronx District Attorney, Robert Johnson, said Mr. Beauchamp is now ''free as a bird.'' A spokeswoman for the State Department of Correctional Services said Mr. Beauchamp's status was not immediately known.
Mr. Johnson could have sought a new indictment against but chose not to because ''we wouldn't have any chance of winning it if we couldn't get it the first time around,'' Mr. McCarthy said.
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