Opinion ID: 1303659
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the problem illustrated the crime against nature

Text: Courts have faced this precise question with respect to statutes that proscribe sodomy or the crime against nature. Jurisdictions differ regarding whether such terms are limited to anal intercourse, or are to be broadly interpreted to cover all unnatural acts, including bestiality, fellatio, and cunnilingus. In Rose v Locke, 423 US 48, 50-51; 96 S Ct 243; 46 L Ed 2d 185 (1975), the Supreme Court seemed to agree that jurisdictions differ as to whether `crime against nature' is to be narrowly applied only to those acts constituting the common-law offense of sodomy, or is to be broadly interpreted to encompass additional forms of sexual aberration. Id. at 50-51. The issue in that case was whether the Tennessee statute the respondent had been convicted of violating applied to cunnilingus, which would not have constituted sodomy at the common law. The Court reinstated the respondent's conviction because Tennessee had adopted the broader version of the statute, id. at 53, which the Court held was not unconstitutionally vague, id. at 52. Although it was not uncommon in other states, including Tennessee, to add fellatio and cunnilingus to the offense of sodomy by interpretation, [7] Michigan followed the narrow approach by separately proscribing fellatio and sodomy. In People v Schmitt, 275 Mich 575, 577; 267 NW 741 (1936), this Court reversed the defendant's conviction for sodomy because the prosecution proved only penetration ... per os, or fellatio, not sodomy. The Court found that the Legislature had shown no disposition to depart from the common-law definition, observing that this conclusion was evidenced further by the fact that in 1931 the Legislature reenacted 1903 PA 198, which prohibited the offense of fellatio. Id. According to Professors Perkins and Boyce, Michigan's narrower approach is the logical position since sodomy was not an offense under the common law of England and is an offense under American common law because of the early English statute which did not apply where the act is in the mouth. [Criminal Law (3d ed), p 466.] Because the scope of the offense is specifically defined, it may not be expanded on the basis of what a judge or jury thinks it ought to encompass. As the Colorado Supreme Court explained in a case with facts identical to Schmitt, [w]e cannot, because of our belief that the act charged against the defendant is even more vile and filthy than sodomy, stretch the sodomy section of the statute to include it. Koontz v People, 82 Colo 589, 594; 263 P 19 (1927).