Don’t play away in flyover country: you might find yourself in more trouble than just facing an angry partner.
Adultery could mean life, Michigan court finds
By Brian Dickerson
Detroit Free Press
(MCT)
DETROIT – In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan’s second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.
“We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today,” Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, “but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion.”
“Technically,” he added, “any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I,” the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan’s criminal code.
No one expects prosecutors to declare open season on cheating spouses. The ruling is especially awkward for Attorney General Mike Cox, whose office triggered it by successfully appealing a lower court’s decision to drop CSC charges against a Charlevoix defendant. In November 2005, Cox confessed to an adulterous relationship.
Murphy’s opinion received little notice when it was handed down. But it has since elicited reactions ranging from disbelief to mischievous giggling in Michigan’s gossipy legal community.
The ruling grows out of a case in which a Charlevoix man accused of trading Oxycontin pills for the sexual favors of a cocktail waitress was charged under an obscure provision of Michigan’s criminal law. The provision decrees that a person is guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct whenever “sexual penetration occurs under circumstances involving the commission of any other felony.”
No more blowjobs in moving cars then.
It’s not even safe to open an Exploder window now either without facing jailtime, so to make assurance doubly sure, you might also want to run ad-aware or similar before using a computer in front of a minor. It’s that or face a potential 40 years in jail.
Via Majikthise:
Teacher faces 40 years for exposing kids to porn, blames adware
A 40-year-old substitute teacher is facing up to 40 years in prison for exposing children to internet pornography.
Julie Amero was convicted on Friday of four counts of risk of injury to a minor.
According to BoingBoing, the teacher blames an an adware infestation. Somehow, the PC may have become infected with pornographic adware, causing inappropriate content to blossom uncontrollably onto her screen.
The police maintained the Amero navigated to pornographic websites during classroom time, but expert witnesses for the defense testified that she could have spawned these windows by navigating to an innocent hairdressing site.
[…]
It’s still OK to stream live-action porn into hotel bedrooms though, so, no worries, eh?
