Court Opinion

ID: 9597768
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:02:40.555719+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:39.340112
License: Public Domain

LUMPKIN, Judge,
concurring in part/dissenting in part.
I concur in the affirmance of Appellant’s conviction for attempted rape, but for the reasons stated below, I must respectfully dissent to the reversal of the Appellant’s conviction for oral sodomy.
This Court in Post v. State, 715 P.2d 1105 (Okl.Cr.1986) relied on federal constitutional law in holding that an individual’s constitutional right of privacy includes the private, consensual acts of sodomy between heterosexual adults. In Post, this Court anticipated that the activity addressed would fall within “the outer limits” of the rights of privacy, which had yet to be marked by the U.S. Supreme Court, and held that 21 O.S.1981, § 886, as applied to non-violent consensual activity between adults in private, violates an individual’s right to privacy under the United States Constitution. However, four months after Post, the United States Supreme Court, in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 106 S.Ct. 2841, 92 L.Ed.2d 140 (1986), reversed the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals and held that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not confer any fundamental right on homosexuals to engage in consensual sodomy, even when the acts in question occur in the privacy of the home. The Court in Bowers recognized that the lower court’s erroneous decision was based upon the right of privacy as enunciated in, among other cases, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965), Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972), and Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (1969). These same decisions were relied upon by this Court in Post. . The Bowers Court held:
[N]one of the rights announced in those cases bears any resemblence to the claimed constitutional right of homosexuals to engage in acts of sodomy ... Moreover, any claim that these cases nevertheless stand for the proposition that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable. 478 U.S. at 190-191, 106 S.Ct. at 2844.
The Court then analyzed the historical development of sodomy statutes in general in light of federal constitutional law and found that “the presumed belief of a majority of the electorate in Georgia that homosexual sodomy is immoral and unacceptable” was an adequate rationale to support the law. 478 U.S. at 196, 106 S.Ct. at 2846. However, it should be noted that the Georgia statute, like the Oklahoma statute, prohibits all acts of sodomy.
In light of Bowers’ holding that the previous Supreme Court decisions do not support constitutional protection for unlimited kinds of private sexual conduct between consenting adults, this Court’s holding in Post is no longer viable and should be reversed.
Additionally, this Court should not disregard its previous decision in Slaughterback v. State, 594 P.2d 780, 781-782 (Okl.Cr.1979), which recognizes that sodomy is no less a crime if it is committed with a consenting person.
Finally, when the Legislature has considered a subject, “this Court is, by law, powerless to modify or extend that statutory enactment in matters which are criminal in nature.” Freshour v. Turner, 496 P.2d 389, 393 (Okl.Cr.1972). The function of this Court “is to determine the interpre*236tation of legislative acts and not to attempt to usurp the legislative functions of government by judicial decree.” In re Luckens, 372 P.2d 635, 636 (Okl.Cr.1962). As the majority notes in its quote from Newsom v. State, 763 P.2d 135, 139 (Okl.Cr.1988), “[t]his Court cannot, through judicial invention, add an element to conduct which is proscribed by statute.” It is the duty and exclusive function of the legislature to determine whether the sodomy statute should include the defense of consent.