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Lucylastic -> RE: What's Wrong With ... (5/3/2016 3:46:03 PM)
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Well depends on whereyou come from apparently
Oklahoma Court Rules That Having Oral Sex With A Passed Out Woman Is Not Rape
Charges against a teenage boy, who allegedly had oral sex with a woman who passed out from drinking, may not proceed, according to an opinion by Oklahoma’s highest criminal court. The opinion, which was handed down last month but began to receive press attention this week, appears to turn on an oversight in Oklahoma’s criminal law.
The case involves a 17-year-old, identified only as R.Z.M. in the court’s opinion, who was drinking and smoking marijuana in a Tulsa park with a 16-year-old female classmate. This classmate reportedly became so drunk that she was unable to walk, was slipping in and out of consciousness, and had to be carried to a car. Sometime after these events, a blood test found her blood-alcohol level to be .341, over four times the legal limit to drive a car in Oklahoma.
After R.Z.M.’s DNA was found on the young victim, he claimed that she had consensual oral sex with him. After prosecutors charged R.Z.M. with “Forcible Sodomy,” a lower court ruled that this crime “cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation.” The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court on criminal matters, agreed with this decision.
Though prosecutors criticized the court’s decision, responsibility for this outcome appears to rest with Oklahoma’s legislature and not with its judiciary. Although Oklahoma’s rape law permits a conviction when “the victim is at the time unconscious of the nature of the act and this fact is known to the accused,” that law defines rape only to include “an act of sexual intercourse involving vaginal or anal penetration.” Because the alleged victim in this case was penetrated orally, R.Z.M.’s alleged actions do not constitute rape in Oklahoma.
Although the state’s “Forcible Sodomy” law is not explicitly limited to vaginal or anal penetration, that law does not include the language applying to unconscious victims. Thus, the court determined that it could not be applied to R.Z.M.’s case. If Oklahoma lawmakers wish for people like R.Z.M. to be convicted in the future, they will likely need to update the forcible sodomy law to bring it in line with the state’s rape law.
Indeed, as a window into just how antiquated that “forcible sodomy” law is, it only refers to the acts prohibited by the law using the euphemistic phrase “the detestable and abominable crime against nature.”
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/04/28/3773579/a-courts-revolting-leniency-to-men-who-sexually-prey-on-passed-out-drunk-women/
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