Opinion ID: 1308602
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Interpretation of the Statute as to the Age Requirement.

Text: Iowa Code section 709.4(2)(c) is commonly referred to as the statutory rape provision. It provides that a sex act between persons not cohabiting as husband and wife constitutes third-degree sexual abuse if the victim is fourteen or fifteen years of age and the defendant is five or more years older than the victim. R.C.S. was fifteen years, ten months, and five days old on the date of her alleged sexual abuse. Thus, Mitchell argues, R.C.S. was not fifteen, but was in fact over fifteen and she ceased to be fifteen the day after her fifteenth birthday. Mitchell raised these arguments in his motion for judgment of acquittal, which the district court overruled. Mitchell's arguments raise a statutory interpretation question. Our scope of review involving the interpretation of a statute is at law. State v. Haberer, 532 N.W.2d 757, 758 (Iowa 1995). For his remarkable position, Mitchell relies heavily on Knott v. Rawlings, 250 Iowa 892, 96 N.W.2d 900 (1959). In Knott, this court interpreted a statute that covered children of the age of sixteen years, or under. Knott, 250 Iowa at 893, 96 N.W.2d at 901. The court was called upon to answer the question whether one who is sixteen years, six months, and three days old is a child of the age of sixteen years, or under within the contemplation of the statute. Id. at 894, 96 N.W.2d at 901. Answering the question in the negative, the court said: A child is one year old on the first anniversary of his birth and is sixteen years old on the sixteenth anniversary. Before the sixteenth anniversary he is under the age of sixteen and after that anniversary he is over the age of sixteen. Sixteen years is an exact and definite period of time. It does not mean or include sixteen years and six months. We should be realistic and not read something into the statute which is not there and which clearly was not intended to be there. This is a criminal statute and cannot be added to by strained construction. Id. We agree with the State that Knott is distinguishable because the statute in Knott employed the language sixteen years, or under and the present statute reads fifteen years of age. The words or under made it clear that the legislature did not intend to include anyone who was a day over sixteen. Id. Moving to the present statute, we think the State's common usage example is convincing. A person's common response to a question about his or her age is to state only the age at the last anniversary of birth. One does not add the additional months and days over that anniversary. We think this is the sense in which the legislature used the words fifteen years of age in the present statute. Thus, fifteen years of age would include all the months and days over fifteen until the person reaches the sixteenth anniversary of his or her birth. As the State points out, a contrary interpretation would yield an absurd result. The statute prohibits a sex act with a person fourteen or fifteen years of age. Mitchell's interpretation would prohibit a defendant from having sexual intercourse with a young girl on her fourteenth birthday but would allow him to do so for the 364 days thereafter until she reaches her fifteenth birthday. The statute in Knott would not have produced a similar absurd result no matter how it was interpreted. See State v. Green, 470 N.W.2d 15, 18 (Iowa 1991) (holding that court interprets a statute to avoid absurd results even when a literal interpretation would yield a contrary result). The district court correctly concluded that because R.C.S. had not yet reached her sixteenth birthday when the alleged sexual abuse occurred, she was fifteen years of age.