Court Opinion

ID: 9853959
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:58:20.551107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:24.347252
License: Public Domain

*412BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting:
In State v. LaMere, 103 Idaho 839, 847, 655 P.2d 46, 54 (1982) (Bistline, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), I wrote to no avail that Idaho’s statutory rape statute should be declared unconstitutional because it violates the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In light of the United States Supreme Court’s recent rulings in gender-based discrimination cases, that argument is even stronger now than it was when first presented in LaMere.
LaMere contains a thorough discussion of the two seminal cases on this issue, Meloon v. Helgemoe, 564 F.2d 602 (1st Cir.1977), cert. denied 436 U.S. 950, 98 S.Ct. 2858, 56 L.Ed.2d 793 (1978), and Michael M. v. Superior Ct. of Sonoma Cty., 450 U.S. 464,101 S.Ct. 1200, 67 L.Ed.2d 437 (1981), and I will not reiterate that argument now. Suffice it to say that the Me-loon holding, premised on the rationale that statutory rape laws create a classification based on gender and that those laws must therefore receive “mid-tier” scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, has been reinforced by Supreme Court reasoning in a number of gender-classification cases, whereas the rational basis standard of Michael M. has not found similar favor.1
A different perspective on the equal protection argument which focuses on what activity is proscribed and who is proscribed from doing it is also merited. This is especially true in light of the persistent argument that one of the main reasons that courts continue to not allow a mistake of age defense to statutory rape is the prevalence of teenage pregnancy. This new perspective would point out that our statutory rape law does not discriminate against men so much as it discriminates against their young female partners. Idaho Code § 18-6101 “proscribes all sex involving underage ... females, but not all sex involving underage ... males____ [A]dolescent women are denied the sexual freedom accorded to men, and they are given in exchange only a weak statutory protection against male sexual aggression. This sort of judicially-compelled contract borders on the unconscionable.” L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 16-28 at 1576 (2 ed. 1988).
Leaving aside the equal protection argument, I would still vote to allow Stiffler the opportunity to present a reasonable mistake of fact defense at trial. One member of the Court in a special concurrence quotes language from Morissette v. United States,2 342 U.S. 246, 72 S.Ct. 240, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952) which states that “[w]hen the legislature
borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed. In such a case, absence of contrary direction may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted definitions, not as a departure from them. Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. at 263, 72 S.Ct. at 250.”
117 Idaho at 411, 788 P.2d at 226 (McDevitt, J., concurring specially).
Conceding that this is an excellent statement of the law as a generality, my perception is that it is incorrectly applied to the common law history of statutory rape. Accordingly, I am not fully “persuaded that the [Idaho] legislature, in codifying the crime of statutory rape, intended to incor*413porate the immemorial3 tradition of the common law that a mistake of fact as to the complainant’s age is no defense.” 117 Idaho at 405, 788 P.2d at 220, (McDevitt, J., concurring specially) (emphasis added). Such is not the “immemorial tradition of the common law.” In fact, “reasonable mistake of age has never been denied as a defense in an English statutory rape case.” Myers, Reasonable Mistake of Age: A Needed Defense to Statutory Rape, 64 Mich.L.Rev. 105, 110 (Nov. 1965) (emphasis added) (hereinafter Myers). Mistake as to the age of the victim was briefly held by the English courts to be no defense to the crime of abduction, Regina v. Prince, L.R. 2 Cr.Cas.Res. 154 (1875), but that case was quickly overruled by statute, apparently without its reasoning ever being transferred to statutory rape in England.
Courts in the United States, however, did latch on to the Prince case, and began using it to justify denying a mistake of fact defense in statutory rape cases.4 This development was “universally followed” in state courts until the California Supreme Court broke from the pack and decided People v. Hernandez, 61 Cal.2d 529, 393 P.2d 673, 39 Cal.Rptr. 361 (1964). See Myers, at 110-111. There is, therefore, an American tradition of approximately one hundred years behind the denial of a mistake of fact defense to statutory rape. However, that tradition was only beginning to develop at the time Idaho’s statutory rape statute was enacted in 1887. The existence of a tradition is of little value for purposes of construing a statute enacted before the tradition developed.
According to Morissette, absent “contrary direction,” we should assume that the Idaho legislature “[knew] and adoptfed] the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken”, Morissette, 342 U.S. at 263, 72 S.Ct. at 250, when it “borrowed” the definition of statutory rape. Such “contrary direction” is entirely lacking. Idaho Code § 18-6101(1), which in the state of Idaho establishes the crime known as statutory rape, was originally enacted by the territorial legislature in 1887. This was long after the enactment in 1864 of what is now I.C. § 18-201, which provides:
All persons are capable of committing crimes, except those belonging to the following classes ... (1) Persons who committed the act or made the omission charged, under an ignorance or mistake of fact which disproves any criminal intent.
Idaho Code § 18-6101 contains no language which excepts the crime defined therein from the provisions of Section 18-201. If an exception is not expressly included in a statute, one will not be implied through statutory construction. Roberts v. Mississippi Repub. Party State Exec. Comm., 465 So.2d 1050 (Miss.1985); see generally Sutherland, Statutes and Statutory Construction § 47.11 (Sands 4th Ed. 1984). We should therefore assume that the legislature knew and adopted the reasonable mistake of fact defense to statutory rape which existed at English common law and at American common law before 1875.
Refusal to recognize a mistake of age defense to statutory rape also continues an archaic practice which is no longer in step with modern values or practical reality. Statutory rape laws were originally enacted to protect very young girls under the age of ten or twelve. Myers, at 110. Such children were assumed to be incapable of consent because, due to their immaturity, they lack the “capacity to understand the nature and implication of the sexual act.” Id., at 119. Idaho Code § 18-6101, however, proscribes sexual intercourse with a female under the age of eighteen. Anyone having access to the newspapers or to a television and who is also blessed with corn*414-422mon sense knows that teenagers in American society are very knowledgeable about sexual activity and that they understand what they are doing when they do it. In fact, society encourages some knowledge-ability for the sake of a child’s safety.5
This is not to say that young people of either sex should necessarily be shorn of all protection in this area. But it does support the argument that an individual should at least have the opportunity to defend himself (or herself) on the grounds that the female in question looked, acted, and/or asserted herself to be over the statutorily prescribed age.
Since Stiffler was denied the opportunity to present such a defense, his conviction should be vacated and the cause remanded for a new trial.

. See, e.g., Clark v. Jeter, 486 U.S. 456, 108 S.Ct. 1910, 1914, 100 L.Ed.2d 465 (1988); Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 723-24 and n. 9, 102 S.Ct. 3331, 3336 and n. 9, 73 L.Ed.2d 1090 (1982).

. Wholly understood is the gathering of forces against Stiffler. It is not improbable that he did labor under a mistake. His chances of proving that are not all that great. But, if he did succeed it would be because he was able to prove to a jury that the alleged victim’s state of maturity *413brought her to the equivalency of an eighteen to twenty year old girl.

. Some very learned authors and jurists here made it very clear that, although the tradition of the common law may be "immemorial," that it is not immutable has been the genius of the common law.

. See, e.g., Baker v. State, 377 So.2d 17, 19 (Fla. 1979); State v. Superior Ct. of Pima Cty, 104 Ariz. 440, 454 P.2d 982, 984 (1969).

. According to a recent newspaper account, Idaho has a high standing among the states in regard to adolescent teenage pregnancies. It is doubtful that the statute, although it may have been effective fifty or seventy years, has had any genuine effect on that situation.