Court Opinion

ID: 9477200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:17:16.306535+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:45.530563
License: Public Domain

CARDAMONE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The district court denied petitioner’s writ of habeas corpus. I vote to affirm that denial on the following grounds. The New York Court of Appeals held that the marital exemption to the rape and sodomy statutes and the gender-specificity of the rape statute each violates both the federal and state equal protection clauses. That court’s remedy for what it held to be unconstitutionally underinclusive statutes was to broaden the scope of the statute. Affirmance of Liberta’s conviction, the New York court continued, under the newly expanded statute does not run afoul of *84defendant's due process rights. People v. Liberta, 64 N.Y.2d 152, 474 N.E.2d 567, 485 N.Y.S.2d 207 (1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1020, 105 S.Ct. 2029, 85 L.Ed.2d 310 (1985). District Court Judge Curtin, considering Liberia’s federal habeas corpus petition, adopted the conclusion reached by the New York Court of Appeals and therefore denied the petition. Liberta v. Kelly, 657 F.Supp. 1260 (W.D.N.Y.1987). I would also deny the habeas writ for the reasons stated by the New York Court of Appeals.
The majority takes a different tack. Although it, too, affirms the denial of the writ, it disagrees with the New York Court of Appeals regarding the requirements of the federal equal protection clause. The majority concludes that the exceptions to the marital exemption and the gender-specificity of the rape and sodomy statutes do not violate federal equal protection. Under federal law, then, the statutes as enacted may be applied without implicating petitioner’s due process concerns.
The disagreement between the majority and both the district court and New York’s highest court has no effect on the disposition of this appeal, but it creates confusion concerning the current status of the statutes in question. It is to highlight this divergence and its consequences that I write separately.
Recognizing, as the majority itself acknowledges, that a federal court cannot review determinations of state constitutional law made by a state’s highest court, it is significant that the New York Court of Appeals determined that the New York equal protection clause — as well as the federal equal protection clause — requires excision of the marital exemption and removal of the gender-specific provisions from its state’s rape and sodomy statutes. Thus, the state court’s determination that the rape and sodomy statutes apply to all males — regardless of their marital status— and that the rape statute applies to rape whether perpetrated by men or women remains the law in New York. These statutes are revised to the extent stated by the New York Court of Appeals, just as if the state legislature had amended the statutes to read as that court revised them. See Wainwright v. Stone, 414 U.S. 21, 23, 94 S.Ct. 190, 192, 38 L.Ed.2d 179 (1973).