Opinion ID: 1041292
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Victim 's Resistance

Text: Before the 1975 reforms, Washington defined rape as an act of sexual intercourse with a person not the wife or husband of the perpetrator committed against the person's will and without the person's consent. Former RCW 9.79.010 (1974) (repealed 1975). Sexual intercourse was considered to be against the person's will and without the person's consent if the victim's resistance [was] forcibly overcome or prevented by fear of immediate and great bodily harm ....  !d. The pre-reform law thus defined rape in terms of the victim's resistance, making an alleged victim's physical reaction a central issue in every prosecution. In many jurisdictions, courts interpreted similar statutes to require evidence of the victim's strenuous physical resistance, or at least some excuse for nonresistance, in order to sustain a conviction of rape. 18 By contrast, Washington 18 See, e.g., Johnson v. State, 118 So. 2d 806, 815 (Fla. App. 1960) ('resistance or opposition by mere words is not enough; the resistance must be by acts, and . . . reasonably proportionate to the strength and opportunities of the woman ... and must be shown to persist until the offense is consummated' (quoting 22 RULING CASE LAw § 10, at 1180 (William M. McKinney ed. 1918))); Magwire v. People, 77 Colo. 149, 154, 235 P. 339 (1925) (quoting Anderson v. State, 82 Miss. 784, 35 So. 202, 202 (1903) (mere passive resistance, silent objection, on the part of the assaulted female, is [in]sufficient to 19 State v. Lynch (Jeffrey Thomas), No. 87882-0 (Gordon McCloud, J., Concurrence) courts rejected this requirement as early as 1910, finding it to be unrealistic and impractical: While it may be expected in such cases from the nature of the crime that the utmost reluctance would be manifested, ... to hold as a matter of law that such manifestation and resistance are essential to the existence of the crime ... would be going farther than any wellconsidered case in criminal law has hitherto gone. . . . Such a test it would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to apply in a given case. A complainant may have exerted herself to the uttermost limit --of her -strength, -and may-have -eontinued- to do- so till the- crime -was -- consummated. Still,. a jury, sitting coolly in deliberation upon the transaction, could not possibly determine whether or not the limit of her strength had been reached. They could never ascertain to any degree of certainty what effect the excitement and terror may have had upon her physical system. State v. Pilegge, 61 Wash. 264, 268, 112 P. 263 (1910) (quoting State v. Shields, 45 Conn. 256, 264 (1877)). Despite this relatively enlightened case law, the pre-reform statute equated nonconsent with physical resistance. Its literal terms thus permitted forced sexual penetration where the victim's resistance had been too easily overcome to justify a jury in convicting of rape); State v. Morrison, 189 Iowa 1027, 179 N.W. 321, 323 (1920) (We find no cases where a mere threat, even a threat to kill, unaccompanied by a demonstration of brutal force or dangerous weapon, is held to be a sufficient putting in fear to excuse nonresistance.); Mills v. United States, 164 U.S. 644, 648, 17 S. Ct. 210, 41 L. Ed 584 (1897) (mere nonconsent of a female to intercourse where she is ... not overcome by numbers or terrified by threats, or in such place and position that resistance would be useless, does not constitute the crime of rape on the part of the man who has connection with her). 20 State v. Lynch (Jeffrey Thomas), No. 87882-0 (Gordon McCloud, J., Concurrence) 19 constitute nonconsent. A court applying such a statute might instruct a jury that it could not convict on the basis of the complainant's mere reluctance or that the 20 complainant must explain an apparent failure of adequate resistance. This problem was one of many that motivated the 1975 reforms, and the legislative history of Washington's rape law reform includes extensive testimony 21 on the need to remove resistance as an element of the rape crime. As one 19 Under this statutory regime, many defendants appealed their rape convictions on the ground that there had been insufficient evidence that the victim resisted; it should be noted, however, that such appeals were apparently rarely successful. State v. Pitman, 61 Wn.2d 675, 379 P.2d 922 (1963) (no merit in appellant's contention that evidence of resistance was insufficient as a matter of law, since victim's reason for not resisting was a question for the jury); State v. Baker, 30 Wn.2d 601, 606-07, 192 P.2d 839 (1948) Uury justified in finding that victim's resistance was prevented by fear); State v. Meyerkamp, 82 Wash. 607, 609, 144 P. 942 ( 1914) (The resistance spoken of in the statute is not one of the elements of the crime. It is evidence of the want of consent which is an element.); see, e.g., State v. Thomas, 9 Wn. App. 160, 163, 510 P.2d 1137 (1973) ([r]eluctant submission does not imply consent, Hazel v. State, 221 Md. 461, 157 A.2d 922 (1960)); nor is the extent of resistance or lack of resistance by the woman other than an item of evidence to be considered ... along with all other evidence which bears upon willingness and consent). 20 See, e.g., State v. Mertz, 129 Wash. 420, 422, 225 P. 62 (1924) Uury instructed that if the victim 'yield[ ed] her consent during any part of the act ... there is no such opposing will as the law requires to convict on the charge of rape'); State v. Williams, 85 Wash. 253, 254, 147 P. 865 (1915) (the prosecuting witness resisted [the defendant's] assault with such force as to show a want of consent upon her part [where] [s]he testified that she fought him as much as she was able; that she is afflicted with heart trouble, which prevented further resistance on her part). 21 See, e.g., Written testimony of Jackie Griswold, supra note 17 (Aside from such relatively unusual situations as where the victim was of unsound mind, or in a stupor, or unconscious of the nature of the act, in the great majority of cases it must be shown that a woman's resistance was forcibly overcome or that her resistance was prevented by fear of immediate and great bodily harm. We thought that fear of a lesser 21 State v. Lynch (Jeffrey Thomas), No. 87882-0 (Gordon McCloud, J., Concurrence) reform advocate put it, Why should rape victims be required to resist to the extent that they receive additional injuries when robbery victims are considered clever when they don't dispute with the robber[?] Written Testimony of Jean Marie Brough at 1, Legislative Coordinator for Seattle NOW, to the S. Judiciary Comm. (Aug. 3, 1974) (on proposed S.B. 3173) (on file with Wash. State Archives). Importantly, however, the champions of reform did not view the removal of the resistance element as tantamount to removing the element of nonconsent. On the contrary, they viewed nonconsent as the essence of the rape crime: Rape is a crime because of lack of consent. Rape statutes should therefore focus on consent and lack of consent and the amount of violence involved. Consent should not be so qualified as to make additional injury to the victim a necessity for conviction. !d. Indeed, even Wallace Loh's law review article on the 1975 reforms, upon which the Camara court ostensibly relied, rejected the argument that the reforms had eliminated the prosecution's duty to prove nonconsent: Modern statutory and decisional law do not treat force and nonconsent as separate formal elements. Indeed, if force ... is not an objective indicator of nonconsent, it is unclear how else the subjective state would be determined. degree of bodily harm might very reasonably prevent resistance. So might threats of future harm, or threats to harm another person, or threats to harm the financial situation or personal relationships of the victim.). 22 State v. Lynch (Jeffrey Thomas), No. 87882-0 (Gordon McCloud, J., Concurrence) Loh, supra, at 552 n.43. 22 Loh's article described the reform statute's focus ... on the culpability of the actor as having important symbolic value, but not as changing the fact that nonconsent is the basic substantive element of the crime. Jd. at 557.