The Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas didn’t deal directly with adultery, but I think it cast a wide enough net to cover it:
I don’t see how adultery laws could be enforced after that.
ETAing too late: And even if they could be, enforcing a dying, rarely-used, and constitutionally dubious (and certain to be challenged) law doesn’t sound like a good use of a prosecutor’s limited resources.
IANALawyer, and I agree that it shouldn’t be a crime, but the adultery thing does have additional issues like a third party who is perhaps “harmed” in some way, a breach of contract, … It’s not exclusively about sexual behavior.
But no, no one should be prosecuted for it. I thought Bill Clinton should have resigned, but he should not have been impeached.
Right. It’s a civil matter, if anything. And sometimes it works.
Breach of contract isn’t a crime.
+1
Where are we, the Plymouth colony? What year is this, 1692? pkbites, don’t be ridiculous.
I don’t want to answer before I know what crimes all fall under the “felony” rule in the US - I hear that tiny things like peeing in public are counted as public exposure = sex crime = felony, and similar.
So if the OP means “serious crime outside prudish or unreasonable standards” then yes, defnitly he should resign, or rather, be fired, and be prosecuted. How can he uphold the law if he doesn’t keep it himself?
There was a scandal some years back when a high-ranking police officer in a mid-sized town was stopped with a high alcohol-level in the middle of the night. At first, they wanted to let it blow over, but the public rightly pointed out how serious the consequences of drunk driving are, and if he doesn’t accept the laws and keep them himself, he has no business enforcing them.
When are some of you going to learn how to read?
Where did I say he should be prosecuted for it? I SPECIFICALLY said he shouldn’t be. I even posted that I believed the law should be repealed. When are some of you going to learn how to read?
You said you think he should resign over it. Is that not “punishment”?
And yeah, I’ll stand by what I said upthread. I think if the legislature won’t repeal the law, then he should ASK to be charged and tried, and then take it up the courts until he reaches one high enough to throw out the whole law as unconstitutional, or just embarrass the legislature so they do whatever it is they need to do to overturn an outdated, archaic law that isn’t enforced anymore.
Why is this an either/or question? It should be obvious that only sensible modern laws are on the books. Because there’s one effect if you have a mixture of new rational and old moral laws: people ignore some laws, or use them selectively. I don’t want to drag Kant’s Imperativ in here, but other philosophers of state as well as highly educated jurists have said that basically, a law must be seen as generally reasonable and just in its application by the general population, or otherwise people will stop obeying it. *
- Sure, people will grumble when they get a speeding ticket or are punished for drunk driving. But in a general way, they understand and agree with the reason behind the law for safety.
And once they loose respect for one law, it’s easy to disregard the law as whole. That’s why we regular change old laws by striking passages, or introduce new laws to plug holes in old laws.
But then, we believe in laws based on rational issues, not sectarian morals or outdated prudishness, and our law system works different: the Legislative passes the law, and the Judges interpret them (the European method, not the common law method of comparing older cases to each other).
This sounds exactly like the non-hypothetical situation the OP is alluding to: somebody broke an outdated law (presumably about sex), but because the law as whole must be kept up, he’s in a bind no matter what. If he keeps on, people loose respect for the law; if he resigns, people loose an otherwise good cop over a dumb issue that shouldn’t be relevant.
Change the laws to modern times, and the problem becomes a non-issue.
Well, over here, police are required to actually measure speed with a radar gun and not just guess, as US cops can. Since radar guns have an error margin, nobody would be charged for doing 56. Unless the weather condition is such - thick mist with low visibility, driving rain close to flooding, thick snow, sheet of ice - that 56 is too fast for the current conditions.
Do laws have expiration dates? I know some things, like the PATRIOT Act, do, since it was just renewed before it was set to expire.
Have we, perhaps, learned our lesson about archaic laws remaining “on the books” by giving all newly created laws an expiration date, or are we doomed to dance this dance in perpetuity?
IMO, choosing to resign because of a scandal is not punishment. YMMV.
Most criminal laws don’t expire, because most crimes are not thought of as acts that will cease to become criminal after an arbitrary date.
The Patriot Act – honestly, I’m not sure that it defines any crimes at all. It grants wider powers to police and prosecutors in what is considered to be a “time of war” – how long that time is will probably be debated for… a long long time. 
Our mileage does vary.
Resignation is a negative. The motive for that is, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, a form of punishment. If the Chief didn’t get any flak from it at all then there would be no calls for him to resign. Since he has been called on to resign, that is punishment, and whether official or not it carries some tangible weight
I would read it the opposite. The flak he takes in the press and the various condemnations are the punishment. The resignation is what he would do to avoid further punishment.
But your opinion is valid too.
Admittedly I’ve over read the OP, but I don’t understand this question at all. Why wouldn’t the CoP be charged for committing a felony, particularly if he admits he did it?
I can’t think of a non-Jim-Crow, non-comic-book reason why there would be no charges.
Did you notice the crime? “Adultery” – an archaic law that is no longer enforced but is still on the books.
Yeah, I just now read that.
In that case I’d say no, since no one else is prosecuted for adultery. This would apply even if the police chief were Nancy Grace.
Heh. No, that would just lead to more felony charges.
Learning your lesson would rather be to stop thinking of all laws as chiseled in stones that can never ever be changed, and that therefore new laws must be introduced constantly to keep up; and instead think of laws as things that are updated and adapted regularly to keep pace with the change in society and technology. (Good luck for that with your vocal religious crowd that politicians pander too, though).
A lot of big controversies in the last decades in German parliament were changes to existing laws (or to the rules about how to apply laws). Because here it’s quite common to change laws. So if the old law read (for an example pulled from my ass)
§999, Horse buggy driving
-
Nobody is allowed to drive a horse-buggy without a license.
-
The classes of buggies requiring licenses are as follows:
a) one horse, license A
b) two to four horses, license B
c) everything bigger than four horses, license C
d) commercial post coach, license D
and suddenly everybody drives these new-fangled motorcars without horses, the new law passed would say
replace in §999 the title with Motorcar driving,
replace horse-buggy in Sen. 1 with motorcar
replace in Sen. 2a, one horse with 5 horsepowers
etc.
valid starting at 1.1.1920, to be published in the official newspaper for laws.
All old editions are changed out (that’s why laws are in loose-leaf folders). No old laws on the books, no additional new laws, just updated.