They could get life in prison. Justice!
This is confusing, but were they not charged for rape and kidnapping because that is a State offense? And is the State pursuing those charges?
I’m not entirely clear on that, either. The girl describes the sexual activity as “consensual,” but that’s not legally possible when you’re 15. Not to mention when you’re locked in a box for days.
Could it be taking some time to convince the girl to testify that she was taken against her will and had sex with them against her will? The article mentions she said she was having consensual sex with them. That sounds like grounds for a statutory rape charge, but not so good for a kidnapping charge I’d think.
This is possible. Sometimes they just need the initial charges so they can hold them long enough to investigate and get the rest of the charges through a grand jury, like in the Ariel Castro case.
Oh, and, in before some jerk says this blog post is anti-marijuana propaganda. If anything, it’s pro-legalization propagada, future jackholes.
Yes. Legalize and put guys like these out of business.
Except, maybe to use as fertilizer.
Indeed. There is no way for a kid to consent. And it may not have been just statutory rape because while (illegal) consent is what delineates statutory rape from other types of sexual assault, it would be impossible to argue that consent was given when the victim is a kidnap victim. The kid has gone through extreme psychological trauma, and may be suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
Rape is also a federal offense, but if committed inside a state, the state has jurisdiction. I don’t actually think there is any statutory rape laws at the federal level except when dealing with interstate trafficking.
We’ll see if California pursues charges. We have some of the strongest laws in the country for statutory rape (we don’t even have close age exemptions, anyone having sex under 18 has committed statutory rape including two minors).
Unfortunately, it will be used as an anti-marijuana propaganda tool.
They didn’t call her a “trooper”. They called her a “trouper”. She’s persistent in the face of hardship, but not an officer of a state police force.
It’s correct on SFGate.
the complaint uses the word “trooper.” I was going off the complaint.
Well, the best cure for stupid speech is smart speech, and that’s what I hope to spark in this discussion thread. I can’t control what anti-pot fanatics will say; I can only control what I say.
If pot production weren’t so profitable under prohibition, sociopaths like these men would not be so drawn to it. Remove the illegality, you reduce the profit, shine light on production and allow for more oversight.
The draconian laws we have around pot only encourage criminal activity, including horror stories like this.
Legalize it, and goddamn right I will advertise it.
That’s an entirely separate brand of stupid. Not that they’d apply in this case, but there should be close-in-age exemptions.
I had criminal law my first semester in school, that was a long time ago, and I haven’t done any crim law stuff since, but my general feeling is that, because the sexual assault of a minor and the drug production and trafficking were so intertwined, the federal courts may be able to prosecute for the rape. As Xeni noted above, at the age of 15 you can’t legally consent, and it is also statutory rape, whether or not she attempted to consent.
Legalize it, and goddamn right I will advertise it.
I can’t wait to see the ads for marijuana on Boing Boing.
As a 15 year old, if you can’t consent to having sex with someone who is 23, you can’t consent to having sex with someone who is 16. Close age exemptions are put in place because minors have sex and states don’t want to send them to jail and branded a sex offender for the rest of their life, not because it makes sense.
California also considers sexting between people under 18 to be child pornography. Again, no close age exemption because that is what it is and in fact, 16 year olds have been charged for it. Minors can be child predators under the law.
California is rather strict in this regard. Many other states have age of consent set at 16.
I totally disagree. Statutory rape laws are not just laws about protecting children, they are laws about punishing people who abuse children. We are not discussing whether a 15-year-old has the capacity to decide whether to engage in sexual behaviour, but whether the person with them should be saying, “Whoa, you are only 15, this isn’t right.” I expect a 40-year-old to say that. I do not expect a 16-year-old (who may be only a few weeks older than the 15-year-old) to say that, and I don’t think that imposing criminal consequences on that 16-year-old makes one bit of sense.
Close in age laws make sense because sexual activity between 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds is very normal while sexual activity between 15-year-olds and 40-year-olds seems very disturbing. They exist because otherwise you end up with a situation where one day it is legal for two people to have sex and the next day it isn’t, and that doesn’t make any sense (since in most places if they don’t prosecute people under the age of consent for having sex). I was extremely happy when Canada adopted a 5-year close in age exemption. Maybe none of us adults are thrilled with the idea of 14-year-old girls having sex with 18-year-old boys but just because we don’t like teenage sexuality that doesn’t mean it should be criminal.
Edit: Also, how does not wanting to brand minors as sex offenders for their whole lives not make sense?
Perhaps a state trooper wrote out the complaint?
