Minnesota Supreme Court: If women are drunk, it's OK to rape them

[Bettie]

What the fuck? So, it's OK to just hang out at parties and bars and wait for a woman who is drunk to come along and then rape her? This honestly boggles my mind. How is this a thing?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rape-victims-designation-drunk-voluntarily-minnesota-supreme-court/

A person who is sexually assaulted while intoxicated does not fit the designation for a more serious charge if he or she consumed the alcohol or drugs voluntarily, the Minnesota Supreme Court said in a ruling released Wednesday.


The opinion stems from the case of Francois Momulu Khalil, a Minneapolis man who was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual misconduct because the victim was drunk and considered by the jury to be "mentally incapacitated." The woman met Khalil after she was refused entry to a bar because she was too intoxicated.


In a unanimous decision written by Justice Paul Thissen, the state Supreme Court said the lower court's definition of mentally incapacitated in this case "unreasonably strains and stretches the plain text of the statute" because the victim was drunk before she met her attacker. To meet the definition, the alcohol must be administered to the person under its influence without that person's agreement, the high court ruled.

Some are worried about the ruling's ramifications. Democratic state Rep. Kelly Moller said it shows the urgent need to update the state's criminal sexual conduct statute, including by closing what she calls the intoxication loophole. She has introduced a bill to amend the statute.

[keithbvadu2]

1. 1+

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[Ms. Toad]

2. No. It is not OK. BUT - last year the MN Legislature defined mentally incapacitated

in a way that excluded being voluntarily drunk.

It is a horrendous statute, and the story rightly generates anger. But directing it at the court is not appropriate; it needs to be directed at the MN legislature, which created it. Given the langauge of the statute, the courts had no choice. They are not permitted to create the elements of the crime; they are limited to interpreting the law - and there is virtually no way to interpret the statute other than the way they did.

There are other means to prove lack of consent (including physical helplessness), but for some reason the prosecution focused on mental incapacitation as the means of proving lack of consent. Probably not the best choice for a new statute that had not been tested yet. Someone in another thread indicated that MN is already working to fix it.