Court Opinion

ID: 9845999
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:32:33.93668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:30.909405
License: Public Domain

Hines, Justice,
concurring.
I write separately to explain my decision to join in the majority opinion. While I agree with the dissent that Drake v. State, 239 Ga. 232 (236 SE2d 748) (1977), represents a substantial departure from prior precedent, legislative changes to OCGA § 16-6-3, the statutory rape statute, require that we adhere to the reasoning in Drake.
The legislature has provided gradients of punishment for statutory rape according to the age of the perpetrator. When the person so convicted is twenty-one years of age or older, the person is to be punished by imprisonment for not less than ten nor more than twenty years. When the person is twenty years old or less the sentence may be as little as one year. Further, if the statutory rape victim is fourteen or fifteen years of age and the person convicted is no more than three years older than the victim, then the person will be guilty of only a misdemeanor. OCGA § 16-6-3 (b). Although the dissent would leave the decision of whether to prosecute for rape or statutory rape to the prosecutor, I believe the sentencing differentials make clear a legislative intent that the crime be treated as statutory rape when force is not present. It would be anomalous and a circumvention of express legislative intent to allow the State to obtain conviction and the consequent minimum ten-year punishment prescribed for forcible rape for the conduct of sexual intercourse between teenagers when the legislature has determined that conduct to be misdemeanor in nature.
Moreover, unlike forcible rape, statutory rape is gender neutral. Therefore, presuming force as a matter of law based on the victim’s age could result in disparate treatment dependent on the gender of the perpetrator. A young male statutory rapist of a 14 or 15-year-old victim could be convicted and alternatively sentenced for forcible rape while a young female statutory rapist of a similarly-aged victim could be punished only for a misdemeanor.
*47To require a factual showing of force in the circumstances of the case at bar is not inconsistent with our determinations in Cooper v. State, 256 Ga. 631 (352 SE2d 382) (1987), Richardson v. State, 256 Ga. 746 (353 SE2d 342) (1987), and Brown v. State, 268 Ga. 154 (486 SE2d 178) (1997). These cases did not involve simultaneous prosecutions for statutory rape and forcible rape, and in Brown, which I authored, child molestation was deemed to be a forcible felony for the purpose of allowing the defendant to present a justification defense under OCGA § 16-3-21 (a).