beautiful_mess38
Jan 21, 2007, 08:41 AM
Cheat on your spouse in Michigan and spend life in prison? Thu Jan 18, 12:58 AM ET
DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Philanderers beware: spouses caught cheating in Michigan could end up spending the rest of their life in prison.
And not the emotional kind.
The state's appeals court recently ruled that extramarital flings can be prosecuted as first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in jail.
"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in 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 the state's criminal code.
Michigan still lists adultery as a felony, although no one has been convicted of the offense since 1971.
Nobody really expects prosecutors to go after cheating spouses. But the ruling has the local legal community twittering about its genuine intended target.
DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Philanderers beware: spouses caught cheating in Michigan could end up spending the rest of their life in prison.
And not the emotional kind.
The state's appeals court recently ruled that extramarital flings can be prosecuted as first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in jail.
"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in 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 the state's criminal code.
Michigan still lists adultery as a felony, although no one has been convicted of the offense since 1971.
Nobody really expects prosecutors to go after cheating spouses. But the ruling has the local legal community twittering about its genuine intended target.