Opinion ID: 1160382
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Number of Sexual Assaults.

Text: Finally Saars asserts that since the sexual encounters all occurred within a period of about two hours on a single day and involved a single victim, they all constitute a single criminal episode or transaction. Therefore, he contends, it was improper for the prosecution to charge three separate counts of first-degree sexual assault. Alternatively he contends that even if the prosecution's charge is proper, the trial court should have required the prosecutor to elect a single count on which to proceed or should have instructed the jury that it could convict the defendant of only one count of first-degree sexual assault. We decline to hold that the defendant's sexual assaults must be viewed, and prosecuted, as a single transaction. At least three separate and distinct incidents of sexual assault occurred in three different ways, each in a separate time period. The defendant was charged on a complicity theory based on the first incident involving anal intercourse. After that assault had been completed, the victim was forced to perform fellatio on the defendant while he performed cunnilingus on her. Finally the defendant forced vaginal intercourse upon the victim. These constituted three separately definable criminal acts, each of which could have been prosecuted individually. There is ample evidence to support a separate charge and conviction for each act, and therefore we hold that the prosecution properly charged three counts of first-degree sexual assault. The judgment is affirmed.