aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Utah Supreme Court: consensual adolescent sex prosecution “absurd”

Eugene Volokh quotes from the opinion:

When she was thirteen years old, Z.C. engaged in consensual sex with a twelve-year-old boy and became pregnant. The state prosecutor chose to file delinquency petitions against both Z.C. and the boy for sexual abuse of a child under [State] Code section 76-5-404.1 [basically, in this context, any sexual touching of someone under 14 -EV], a crime that would constitute a second degree felony if committed by an adult....

Because we conclude that the legislature could not possibly have intended to punish both children under the child sex abuse statute for the same act of consensual heavy petting, we hold that applying the plain language of the statute in this case produces an absurd result.

Via The Liberty Papers:

In other words, no rational review of state laws against sex crimes against children should be held to apply to a case where both of the participants in the act are, in fact, children.

Approve of it, or disapprove of it, as you wish. But there’s no rational reason that something like this should be treated as a felony.