Guess the state!

[theweaselking]

Her MySpace says she's 19, divorced, and looking for no-strings sex.

Her 22-year-old lover is going to prison, because she's lying, she's actually 13.

Bonus: He's not the first guy to be fooled. And not the first to go to jail.

Guess the state!

Comments

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia Pete tells all.

Also: The proper legal answer to your question is, as always, "It depends". It depends on the crime, depends on the circumstances surrounding it, and it depends on the strength of the other elements of the crime. Usually, it's a mitigating factor, but you rejected the concept of mitigation earlier, so...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

I read that. It also says ignorance is no excuse, but that doesn't seem to be relevant to anyone else here except me. Is there a reason for that?

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Yes.

It should be considered a mitigating factor because nobody is saying here that anyone thought the man did not know that it was illegal to have sex with a 13 year old. He knew what the law was. He didn't know he was breaking it. He thought he was having sex with someone who had reached the age of consent. That is a different matter entirely.

This is not an open-and-shut case, at least in terms of the broader questions, and you seem to think that it is.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Ah, all right.

Have you heard of other cases like this one? Do you know how they turned out?

[publius1.livejournal.com]

When they make the news, it's generally for one of two reasons:

1) the application of the law in question seemed to come up with an unreasonable result, like in "Romeo and Juliet" type situations. For example, in Kansas, there's a "Romeo and Juliet" provision that makes underage statutory rape penalties for opposite-sex pairings substantially smaller than between a same-sex pairing. It made the news because of this.

Generally, cases where it probably wouldn't shock anyone that the law was applied won't get published. It's only when it's obvious that a large group of people would find an injustice done that it gets in there.

For this reason, cases where the person was let out of a statutory rape conviction because mitigating factors were discovered (or their sentence was vastly reduced) don't tend to hit the newstands. :) A quick google search shows a variety of opinion pieces and articles in both directions, though...

2) because the execution of the crime was so egregious (Like, a 40-year-old having sex with a 6-year-old) that is shocks the conscious. There's no way that a reasonable citizen will find this to be anything other than statutory rape. It starts to get fuzzier for a lot of people the closer in age the two get. For example, an 18-year-old having sex with a 17-year-old, and the 17-year-old's birthday is in a week. Statutory rape? Probably in some states, since dayumn, they coulda just waited a week. But not cut-and-dry disgusting either.


As an aside, Wikipedia had a link to the age of consent in various countries and states... it's interesting.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Also, as Le Roi Weasel points out, cases like this are turning out in the same way every time in states where it's a strict liability offense and is often prosecuted (since prosecutorial discretion is still allowed in most states, heh); the person goes to jail, regardless of whether a reasonable average citizen would have liked to put them there.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

There's this one, from the UK. (http://theweaselking.livejournal.com/2315849.html)

It's actually pretty rare to find stat rape cases these days where the underger is lying about it AND there's no applicable Romeo And Juliet Law. There's the scholarship student from Georgia who's serving 10 years because his girlfriend (consentually) gave him a blowjob for his 18th birthday, but that's a prosecution and conviction based entirely on race and class - he's black and poor, she's white and rich, and that's Georgia, so OF COURSE they dug and dug and threw the book at him.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Because you're discussing ignorance of the law, and we're discussing a lack of intent.

"I didn't know porking children was a crime" is not a defense. That's ignorance of the law, which you are talking about.

But the point is that our jailbird, in the story, isn't claiming that he didn't know it was illegal to fuck children. He knew that.

He's saying that *he had no idea she was a child*, which is difference. That's not ignorance of the law. That's a lack of intent to break the law.

The standard test for intent is "purposefully, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently".

Specifically, did he PURPOSEFULLY fuck a child? No. From his POV, he purposefully fucked an ADULT.

Did he KNOWINGLY fuck a child? No. That's the point, she deceived him.

Did he RECKLESSLY fuck a child? Iffy - but he had concerns, he brought them to her, and she addressed them. That tends to mean he wasn't reckless.

Did he NEGLIGENTLY fuck a child? Uh, no. How would you ever do that, anyway? Negligence isn't exactly a concept that applies, here.

So, he's got no intent. He's got no Mens Rea. Were this ia murder trial, right there the murder charge would be gone, because you can't convict for murder without mens rea. You can't even get him for criminal negligence, because negligence requires mens rea, too. In fact, if he's truly not got any of them, you can't even get him on manslaughter, since he wasn't doing anything reckless or negligent, let alone intentional.

Now, if he'd known she was 13, and fucked her without knowing that fucking 13-year-olds was illegal, THEN you'd have point about ignorance of the law. The thing is, at that point he's got intent - he purposefully and knowingly fucked a child - which is not the same thing.


The problem is, statutory rape is a strict liability crime - it is a crime for which mens rea is irrelevant. It doesn't matter *why* you fucked the child, or what you knew when you did it. It only matters that you fucked the child, and the only thing the state has to prove is that you did it, not also show why you did it. The only defenses against conviction are the ones like duress[1], where you take on the burden of proof to assert that yes you did it, but there was a very good reason why you shouldn't be convicted.




[1]: "I had to do it or that man was going to kill my whole family, and me, and the victim. And I genuinely believed him." The formal definition is along the lines of "I had to do it to prevent a greater evil" - it's the same defense you can use against robbing a bank because the REAL criminal has a gun to your head, or against a speeding ticket incurred while getting a dying person to the hospital.[2]

[2]: And you'd damn well better hope that they live AND that you don't hurt anyone else in the process, on that one.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Your explanation is better than wiki.

Thank you.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

In fact, Wikipedia Pete (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea#Mens_rea_under_the_American_Law_Institute_Model_Penal_Code) has a SPECIFIC section on everything I just said, and then some, and specifically mentions statutory rape in the section on strict liability.

So I probably could have just linked that section to you in the first place. Oh, well.