Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project
2016/05/01
In modern day America, as psychopaths dominate all levels of government, truth is far stranger than fiction. This assertion is illustrated in a ruling this week by an Oklahoma court which declared that state law doesn’t criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious. Seriously.
Outrage followed the unanimous ruling by the Oklahoma’s criminal appeals court by critics claiming the system was setting itself up to blame the victim.
As the Guardian reports, the case involved allegations that a 17-year-old boy assaulted a girl, 16, after volunteering to give her a ride home. The two had been drinking in a Tulsa park with a group of friends when it became clear that the girl was badly intoxicated. Witnesses recalled that she had to be carried into the defendant’s car. Another boy, who briefly rode in the car, recalled her coming in and out of consciousness.
The boy later brought the girl to her grandmother’s house. Still unconscious, the girl was taken to a hospital, where a test put her blood alcohol content above .34. She awoke as staff were conducting a sexual assault examination.
Tests would later confirm that the young man’s DNA was found on the back of her leg and around her mouth. The boy claimed to investigators that the girl had consented to performing oral sex. The girl said she didn’t have any memories after leaving the park. Tulsa County prosecutors charged the young man with forcible oral sodomy.
“Forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation,” the decision read.
The court’s reasoning for their decision was arguing over the definition of force and how it relates to unconscious individuals. “We will not, in order to justify prosecution of a person for an offense, enlarge a statute beyond the fair meaning of its language,” stated the court, implying that no one need force themselves on a victim if they are incapacitated.
Benjamin Fu, the Tulsa County district attorney leading the case, said the ruling had him “completely gobsmacked,” reported the Guardian.
“The plain meaning of forcible oral sodomy, of using force, includes taking advantage of a victim who was too intoxicated to consent,” Fu said. “I don’t believe that anybody, until that day, believed that the state of the law was that this kind of conduct was ambiguous, much less legal. And I don’t think the law was a loophole until the court decided it was.”
Focusing on whether or not the victim was able to consent implies that the victim was somehow at fault for simply being unconscious.
Legal experts, weighing in on the ruling, note that the decision is largely based on Oklahoma’s “archaic” laws.
“This is a call for the legislature to change the statute, which is entirely out of step with what other states have done in this area and what Oklahoma should do,” Michelle Anderson, the dean of the CUNY School of Law, who has written extensively about rape law, said. “It creates a huge loophole for sexual abuse that makes no sense.”
While Oklahoma already has laws on the books to protect victims who are too intoxicated or unconscious to consent to vaginal or anal intercourse, there is nothing in the law that prevents an individual from orally violating an unconscious victim.
“My argument was that if you rule today that because she was intoxicated it can’t be force, then … you’ll have to engage in what I can only refer to as the ‘orifice test,’” Fu said. “Whereby the contact by the defendant and the state of mind of the victim are the exact same. It just depends on (the location of the sexual act).”
State Rep. Scott Biggs, R-Chickasha, says he plans to amend a bill to include unconscious victims in Oklahoma’s forcible sodomy law, according to Oklahoma Watch, the first outlet to report on the ruling. In a news release on Thursday, Biggs said, ““I am horrified by the idea that we would allow these depraved rapists to face a lower charge simply because the victim is unconscious. I think the judges made a grave error, but if they need more clarification, we are happy to give it to them by fixing the statute.”