A
California appeals court overturned the rape conviction of a man who
authorities say pretended to be a sleeping woman's boyfriend before
initiating intercourse, ruling that an arcane law from 1872 doesn't
protect unmarried women in such cases.
A
panel of judges reversed the trial court's conviction of Julio Morales
and remanded it for retrial, in a decision posted Wednesday from the Los
Angeles-based court.
Morales
had been sentenced to three years in state prison. He was accused of
entering a woman's bedroom late one night after her boyfriend had gone
home and initiating sexual intercourse while she was asleep, after a
night of drinking.
The
victim said her boyfriend was in the room when she fell asleep, and
they'd decided against having sex that night because he didn't have a
condom and he had to be somewhere early the next day.
Morales
pretended to be her boyfriend in the darkened room, and it wasn't until
a ray of light from outside the room flashed across his face that she
realized he wasn't her boyfriend, according to prosecutors.
"Has
the man committed rape? Because of historical anomalies in the law and
the statutory definition of rape, the answer is no, even though, if the
woman had been married and the man had impersonated her husband, the
answer would be yes," Judge Thomas L. Willhite Jr. wrote in the court's
decision.
The
appeals court added that prosecutors argued two theories, and it was
unclear if the jury convicted Morales because the defendant tricked the
victim or because sex with a sleeping person is defined as rape by law.
The court said the case should be retried to ensure the jury's conviction is supported by the latter argument.
The
decision also urges the Legislature to examine the law, which was first
written in response to cases in England that concluded fraudulent
impersonation to have sex wasn't rape because the victim would consent,
even if they were being tricked into thinking the perpetrator was their
husband.
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