Word: raping
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...hole up in selected enclaves and strike a strictly defensive stance. Kennan left no doubt (see box) that he was unhappy about "this unpromising involvement in a remote and secondary theater," an attitude that evokes distant echoes of Neville Chamberlain's dismissal of Hitler's plans to rape Czechoslovakia as "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing...
Innocent Mind. What makes all this a current cause célèbre in assorted law reviews is the fact that statutory rape is a rare anomaly in U.S. law. In most crimes, notes Omaha Lawyer Larry W. Myers in the Michigan Law Review, the prosecution must prove mens rea (the guilty mind), an ancient concept that includes criminal intent. Not so for statutory rape. An American may beat the rap by proving that he didn't do it, proving that the girl was of age-or (in Virginia) marrying her. In most cases, though, a claim that...
Everyone agrees that statutory-rape laws are soundly aimed at protecting immature girls from seduction, says Myers. Indeed, modern permissiveness in feminine speech, dress and deportment may well make such laws all the more important. But what if the girl is experienced or deliberately lies about her age? Along with having no defense, argues Myers, a man confronts "unrealistically high" ages of consent in most states. Delaware, to be sure, sets the age at seven, but in most other states it ranges from 16 to 18-and up to 21 in Tennessee. For statutory rape...
...Realities. The point of Myers' article is that all this may well be changed by the case of Francisco Hernandez. Until he appealed to the California Supreme Court (see Courts), no U.S. court has ever permitted age-mistake as a defense against a charge of statutory rape. Hernandez, though, pointed to a California law that exonerates criminal acts committed "under an ignorance or mistake of fact which disproves any criminal intent." Having recently applied that rule to bigamy, the California Supreme Court scrapped 68 years of precedents and extended it still further in reversing Hernandez's conviction. Chief...
...between 13 and 16, he argues, she may easily look and act 16 or older, and the male should be allowed reasonable age-mistake unless he is more than four years her senior. "Finally," says Myers, "consensual intercourse with females 16 and older should not be branded as rape." If legislatures balk, he adds, "the courts themselves, as in Hernandez, should take the initiative and bring their decisions into line with social realities by recognizing the defense of reasonable mistake...