From California comes a terrible case of a rape conviction overturned because of an outdated law: According to the appeals court’s interpretation of state law, tricking someone into having sex with you by pretending to be someone else is only illegal if the rapist is pretending to be your husband.
Here’s the case: A woman and her boyfriend go to a party, come home and go to bed. The boyfriend leaves the room after she falls asleep, and a man named Julio Morales comes in. He knows she’s asleep and starts having sex with her. When she wakes up and realizes Morales isn’t her boyfriend, she starts resisting and Morales runs away. She pressed charges and Morales was sentenced to three years in prison.
But Morales’ lawyer appealed the case. As this Salon piece spells out, it’s not up for debate that the victim was asleep, that Morales started having sex with her while she was unconscious, and that the sex was nonconsensual. But:
California law only explicitly makes it a crime to trick someone into having sex if she believes she’s having sex with her husband. That’s technically true of the law. The judges said that because they couldn’t be sure whether the jury had convicted Morales based on correct theory (that she was unconscious) rather than the incorrect one (he pretended to be someone else), the whole case had to be retried.
When the case law was written, in 1872, “rape was an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a female not the wife of the perpetrator.” The judges seem dismal about their verdict in their official opinion, which reads: “We reluctantly hold that a person who accomplishes sexual intercourse by impersonating someone other than a married victim‟s spouse is not guilty of the crime of rape of an unconscious person.”
Oregon rape laws, thankfully, don’t contain provisions about marital status of the victim.
Now, Morales will be retried on the grounds that he had sex with someone who couldn’t consent, not that he was impersonating her boyfriend. But, in the meantime, California has some law-changing to do.
This is so fucked.
I haven’t read the case file, but chances are the jury did convicted Morales based on correct theory (that she was unconscious). So hopefully they’ll do so again.
Also, how did the guy get into the house? Did the boyfriend allow this?
This really isn’t that big a deal.
While it’s not ideal, it’s actually evidence the legal system works: A prosecutor used the wrong law, the trial court applied the law improperly, and both got busted on it.
This guy will now be retried on the correct theory and almost certainly convicted. He will not walk on double jeopardy.
What happened here by analogy:
2 Oregon Laws:
A) Murder
B) Murder with a Blue Car
Everyone watches defendant murder someone on purpose with his truck. He yells “I’m going to kill you with this truck and I’ve been planning to do so for months.”
Prosecutor stupidly charges Defendant with Murder with a Blue Car. Jury convicts. Defendant appeals and says “there was no evidence I murdered with a BLUE CAR.” Appeals court says “you’re right. The state has to prove you used a blue car to convict you of Murder with a Blue Car. You get a new trial.”
New trial: Prosecutor 2 charges Defendant with Murder. Defendant is convicted of Murder.
Maybe the state legislature takes Murder by Blue Car off the books, but more likely, every other prosecutor simply charges Murder as they have been doing and ignores a basically superfluous law with unnecessary extra elements to prove.
FIN.
@CC: Wrong, this is clearly something pernicious and evil.