Let’s say a minor and an adult are caught in the act of sex. Both of them claim rape, and there is sufficient evidence that the minor did perpetrate violent rape to make a DA willing to pursue that charge in court. However, the DA knows that the minor’s attorney will (presumably) try to suppress that evidence due to the fact that, as I understand it, the adult is guilty of statutory rape regardless of what the minor did prior to the sexual act. Since the charge of statutory rape is a strict liability offense, the adult may not offer much, if anything, in the way of mitigating evidence if he has been caught having sex with the minor.
So, does a legal disconnect occur in my reasoning or is the adult, once again, completely screwed?
That done, however, IIRC if a person is made against his/her will to engage in an otherwise illegal act, through main force or grave threat of harm or an impairment of their capacity to consent or resist (drugged), they are not legally culpable.
If the evidence does point to the minor as indeed the perpetrator of a sexual battery in the modality of “by the use of force or the realistic threat or fear of grave harm or the impairment of the victim’s capacity to consent or resist”, then the adult victim would NOT be liable for a charge of sexual battery in the modality of “by the affected party being under 16 years of age” and the prosecution would not charge him/her.
I will defer to those who know more about criminal law than I do, but I suspect that any assertion that a particular state’s rape statute imposes strict liability refers to the concept that “I didn’t know she was only 15” is not defense.
In other words, you may be found guilty of statutory rape, even if you didn’t know you were having sex with an underage partner and, accordingly, had formed no intent to have sex with a minor.
That’s different from saying that a person who is forced to have sex, or is raped while unconscious, or otherwise never forms the intent to have sex at all, may be held (strictly) liable for statutory rape.
In a criminal trial you have 2 parties making an argument, the prosecution and the defence.
At the level of concept, ‘strict liability’ is about the burden on the prosecution to prove intention or recklessness by the accused.
By contrast, the defence can rely on a seperate concept of ‘voluntariness’ to rebut the prosecution.
Both concepts refer to the state of mind of the defendant. If you allow ‘strict liability’ you remove one part of the prosecution’s burden. However, the question of ‘voluntariness’ remains available to the defence.
Sevastopol: I knew I wasn’t sufficiently clear. This question is about whether the DA would be able to pursue a case against the minor if the minor (or the attorneys thereof) was trying to pursue a statutory rape case against the adult.
I was thinking that since it was possible the minor’s case could go forward, the adult’s case would have to be completely suppressed to avoid prejudicing the legal system against the minor. (If the system were truly perverse, the minor could be convicted of the violent rape and still be able to launch a case against the adult for statutory rape in which the defendant’s conviction would be totally irrelevant. But I don’t think that is the case.)
I think you need to understand that “strict liability” simply means that the defendant does not need to have the necessary intention. For example, in rape, it simply means that the prosecution does not need to prove intention of the defendant - intention is a non-issue.
However, this does not preclude the usual defenses of Duress, Automatism, whatever.
In the case of a minor raping an adult, then, if the prosecution for the minor alledges statutory rape, then the defense will bring up the standard defences.
In a normal rape trial, however, the prosecution would first have to prove intention, and then the defense can bring up the defences.
My understanding is that strict liability attaches to intent (or lack thereof) to COMMIT an act in general. What I mean is that the adult in this case did not intend sex of any sort, therefore no strict liability, no statutory rape. Strict liability suggest vulnerability if the adult has sex with a minor without knowing the status of the minor. The argument there is, if you are going to have sex with someone, you are responsibile for knowing that they are not a minor. The same can’t be surmised from the circumstance in the OP.
I’d say if the minor (assumedly male) is the violent aggressor, any good DA would get the minor charged as an adult, especially if the minor is around 15-17 years old and sufficiently physically mature to have forced himself on the adult female.
Now if it was a minor female, I doubt anyone would believe that any rape from the female would be a possiblilty. Unless maybe she herself was sufficiently large to subdue a small male or had a gang of females hold down a male victim.
Even if the minor were somehow exempt from criminal liability for rape (and they aren’t) they’d still be liable for myriad criminal offenses, inlcuding felonious assualt, battery, and kidnapping.
The liability of the adult would depend to some extent on the circumstances of the case, the wording of the statute, and the prosecutor.
This almost happened to one of my friends. He is a pussy to begin with and got drunk at a party. Two girls, one 14 and one 16, accosted him and tried to give him oral sex. He was saved by a different 16 year old girl. My friend was 23 at the time.