LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's attorney general on Friday called on lawmakers to update the state's definition of sexual assault after appellate judges overturned a rape conviction on grounds that an obscure, 19th-century law fails to protect unmarried women when a rapist impersonates a lover.
The 1872 statute makes it a crime for a man to have sex with a woman while posing as her husband. But it does not address the case of an impostor who poses as a woman's boyfriend, which was key to the overturned conviction because the woman in that case was unmarried.
"The evidence is clear that this case involved a non consensual assault that fits within the general understanding of what constitutes rape," Kamala Harris, the state's Democratic attorney general, said in a statement. "This law is arcane, and I will work with the Legislature to fix it."
One state lawmaker said on Friday he planned to introduce legislation to change the statute. Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian, a Republican, said in a statement that closing the loophole in the rape law would be his "top legislative priority."
The ruling, handed down on Wednesday by a three-judge panel of the state's Second District Court of Appeal, stems from a 2009 case in which an 18-year-old woman fell asleep next to her boyfriend in her darkened bedroom. Her boyfriend left, another man entered the room, and she awoke to the sensation of having sex, the judges' written opinion said.
California official urges law to stop rape by impersonators - Read Full Story at US- Reuters
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