Court Opinion

ID: 9553944
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:37:47.191376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:32:40.204373
License: Public Domain

Brazil, J.,
concurring: I must reluctantly concur notwithstanding the problems created thereby. When I first compared indecent liberties with a child, K.S.A. 1986 Supp. 21-3503, with aggravated sexual battery, K.S.A. 1986 Supp. 21-3518(l)(b), I concluded that the two crimes were identical. This conclusion was based on the assumption that, by case law and statute, Kansas had decided that, except when married, minors under *172sixteen years of age could not legally consent to sexual acts. Consequently, “lack of consent” was not, in fact, an additional element in aggravated sexual battery because consent was not legally possible in indecent liberties cases or aggravated sexual battery cases.
I further concluded that “lack of consent” must have been inadvertently added by the legislature in 1983 when in 21-3518(l)(b) it adopted by reference the definition of sexual battery contained in K.S.A. 1983 Supp. 21-3517. Since that statute deals with sexual battery involving persons over sixteen, it necessarily included lack of consent as an element of the crime.
Having concluded that indecent liberties with a child and aggravated sexual battery were identical crimes and that the only difference was that indecent liberties was a class C felony and aggravated sexual battery was a class D felony, then State v. Clements, 241 Kan. 77, 734 P.2d 1096 (1987), would be controlling. In that case, the supreme court found that aggravated criminal sodomy, K.S.A. 1986 Supp. 21-3506, and indecent liberties with a child, K.S.A. 1986 Supp. 21-3503(l)(b), were identical offenses. The court held that a defendant can be sentenced only under the lesser penalty.
After further research, I find that my assumption regarding consent is in error. Our present offense of indecent liberties with a child replaces the older offense of statutory rape contained in G. S. 1949, 21-424, which provided:
“Kvery person who shall be convicted of rape by carnally and unlawfully knowing any female person under the age of eighteen years shall be punished by confinement and hard labor not less than one nor more than twenty-one years, and every person who shall be convicted of forcibly ravishing any female person shall be punished by confinement and hard labor not less than five years nor more than twenty-one years.”
With the enactment of the new criminal code in 1969, G. S. 1949 21-424 was replaced by K.S.A. 21-3502(1) dealing with what had been forcible rape and K.S.A. 21-3503(l)(a) dealing with what had been statutory rape.
In Wiebe v. Hudspeth, 163 Kan. 30, 33-34, 180 P.2d 315 (1947), the supreme court considered the question of consent in connection with the crime of incest and statutory rape as follows:
“In State v. Learned, [73 Kan. 329, 85 Pac. 293 (1906)], the defendant made *173the same argument petitioner makes here, namely that since an ingredient of the offense of incest was consent and since under our statutes a female under the age of eighteen could not give her consent to intercourse, then one could not be guilty of incest and statutory rape with the same female. The court first passed over the question of whether under our statute joint consent of both parties was necessary to constitute the crime of incest. The court then said:
“ ‘The inquiry then arises, Can a girl under the age of eighteen years consent to an act of sexual intercourse with one within the degrees of relationship within which marriage is incestuous and void, and thus become guilty of incest? If not, why not? There is no statutory provision or common-law rule to the contrary. Section 2016 of the General Statutes of 1901, commonly called the age-of-consent law, simply provides that “every person who shall be convicted of rape, either by carnally and unlawfully knowing any female under the age of eighteen years, or,” etc. This does not disqualify the female under eighteen years from consenting, hut provides, in effect, that her consent is no defense [emphasis added]; that notwithstanding her consent the act, on the part of the man, constitutes the crime of rape. (The State v. Woods, 49 Kan. 237, 30 Pac. 520; The State v. White, 44 Kan. 514, 520, 25 Pac. 33.) We answer the question in the affirmative. A female under the age of eighteen years may be guilty of the crime of incest.’ (p. 332.)
“The case of State v. White, 44 Kan. 514, 25 Pac. 33, seems to have been the first prosecution for statutory rape after the statute was amended in 1887 by changing the age stated in the statute from ten years to eighteen. The author of the opinion did not like the change since the result, as he saw it, was to make rape out of a simple act of fornication when the female in the case was under eighteen. He pointed out when the law was first adopted the legislature believed a girl ten years old had capacity to give her consent to intercourse and did not have such capacity at an earlier age, but that in 1887 it would seem that the lawmakers believed the girls of Kansas at that time had no capacity to give any intelligent consent to sexual intercourse until they arrived at the age of eighteen years. This court said:
“ ‘In substance, however, the law-makers simply intended to punish any male person by imprisonment in the penitentiary at hard labor for a term not exceeding 21 years who might be guilty of any kind of illicit sexual intercourse with any girl under 18 years of age whether she consented or not, and whatever might be the surrounding circumstances, and although the intercourse might be pure and simple fornication.’ (p. 520.)
“From the earliest times in this state the age limit stated in the statute defining statutory rape has been spoken of as the ‘age of consent.’ Actually, however, the word ‘consent’ does not appear in the statute. The real meaning of the statute is that whereas under some of the other statutes the state must prove the use of force or promise of marriage, the use of a drug or some other element, in a prosecution for a violation (G.S. 1935, 21-424), all the state has to prove is fornication and that the female was under eighteen. That construction gave us the term ‘statutory rape.’ The statute makes an act rape which but for its peculiar provision as to the age of the female would not be rape at all. To hold as argued *174by the petitioner here would be to give G. S. 1935, 21-424, a meaning not intended by the lawmakers and not given it by any court.”
Consequently, lack of consent is not an element in indecent liberties cases but it is an element in aggravated battery cases.
Notwithstanding the additional element of “lack of consent” in aggravated sexual battery, I fail to comprehend the legislative purpose of creating this crime. The crime of indecent liberties can also involve victims who have not consented. Consequently, I have been unable to think of an example of an act with a person under age sixteen constituting aggravated sexual battery that would not also constitute indecent liberties with a child.
Lack of consent implies force or intimidation and would seem to be the basis for a more serious crime; yet aggravated sexual battery is a class D felony whereas indecent liberties is a class C felony.
As I now read these two statutes, an eighteen-year-old boy sexually touching or fondling his fifteen-year-old girlfriend with her consent could be guilty of a class C felony whereas a stranger forcibly touching a victim under sixteen in a sexual manner resulting in physical and psychological harm to the victim could be charged and convicted of aggravated sexual battery, a class D felony.
Such a result is abhorrent to me.
Davis, J., concurring: I concur in the result.