Wisconsin Appeals Court Rejects Equal Protection Challenge to Age Limits in Sex Law

The Court of Appeals of Wisconsin has rejected the argument that a statute making it a crime for anybody to have sex with a person age 16 or 17 who is not married to that person violates the constitutional requirement of equal protection of the laws. Ruling in State of Wisconsin v. Pryes, 2009 WL 1606746 (June 10, 2009) (not officially published), the court upheld the refusal by Circuit Judge Patrick L. Willis of the Manitowoc County Circuit Court to dismiss charges against Dennis S. Pryes, who was charged with violating the statute by having sex with an unmarried 16-year-old woman.

Wis. Stat. Sec. 948.09 provides: "Whoever has sexual intercourse with a child who is not the defendant’s spouse and who has attained the age of 16 years is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor." The word "child" is defined in 948.01 as "a person who has not attained the age of 18 years." Children who are age 16 or 17 can married in Wisconsin with parental consent. Pryes, then 51, was charged with having sex with a 16 year old. He moved to dismiss the charges, claiming a violation of due process and equal protection, arguing that the state had no rational basis for allowing some 16 year olds to have sex but forbidding it for others.

The court agreed with the trial judge that the distinctions drawn by the statute are rational. The court focused its attention primarily on the equal protection challenge, pointing out that this case did not involve any suspect classification, and thus the state could impose differential treatment if there was any rational justification for it.

" While Pryes complains that Wis. Stat. Sec. 948.09 classifies married persons differently than unmarried persons, there is a rational basis for that distinction," wrote Judge Lisa S. Neubauer for the court. "The purpose of sec. 948.09 is clear: to protect minors between the age of sixteen and eighteen from the consequences of sexual intercourse. Pursuant to Wis. Stat. Sec. 765.02, a person between the age sixteen and eighteen may marry with parental or custodial permission. Therefore the minor is not without protection or guidance in making his or her decision to marry. While Pryes is correct that once married, the State is no longer able to initiate charges on the minor’s behalf under sec. 948.09, this is precisely the type of balancing we expect from the legislature."

As the court sees it, the legislature can decide that in general people within that age range do not yet have the maturity to make for themselves the decision to engage in sexual intercourse, which may lead to pregnancy outside marriage, sexually transmitted diseases, or other complications. By exempting married persons from this prohibition, the state is counting on their parents or guardians to make a judgment about their maturity that will serve the state’s protective purpose. "Many of the significant interests of the state are addressed when a minor has obtained permission to marry – most obviously the lack of considered consent, heightened vulnerability to physical and psychological harm, the lack of mature judgment, the potential for sexual exploitation and the potential for a minor bearing a child outside of a marital relationships," wrote Judge Neubauer. "Wisconsin Stat. Sec. 948.090 reflects the legislature’s judgment that absent the assurance of parental guidance and considered consent involved in the marriage of a minor, the state is justified in continuing to protect the minor until age eighteen."

The court rejected Pryes’ invocation of cases – primarily due process cases – from other jurisdictions sustaining challenges to criminalization of consensual sex, pointing out that those cases were all distinguishable. And the court found that any due process concerns raised by the statute were satisfied by the legislature’s legitimate objective to protect teenagers from the consequences of sexual activity prior to the state’s 18 year old age of consent.

The court designated this as an unpublished decision.

Comments

[Keith Richard Radford Jr]

Getting to maters that mater is something we seem to be able to get down to humbly; I would like to share this with you. This from my life experience is a true connection to the ties of races through our own sex laws which have been built on misconceptions and myth.

The Supreme Court just ruled on sex offender laws where some factions of our government think by some inert reasoning that sex offender should be quarantined like some virus steaming from draconian/Islamic law sex offenders should be executed. I have seen for myself, video taken in another country where a sex offender is placed on a pole much like the Catholics use to use a pyramid shaped object and have them sit on it and spin, the pole travels through the body looking for the throat but if not found its ok cause the sharpened end of the pole will come out somewhere. The heritage of the act is in its self a throwback to troglodyte’s who are so obsessed with sex they can find that the way to deal with the issue is as revolutionary, as war, and two wrongs don’t make a right but has in fact called up deep rooted issues of people who have had to put up with this kind of "hierarchy" of historic hysteria far to long. A word taken from hysterectomy, hysteria is tied to castration used to make animals less threatening right? Good old Monty Hall. Well no wonder it’s wrong, right?

Anyway we are supposed to be the most advanced nation and we still have a death penalty when the rest of the world except for nations we are still warring with, {think!} While other nations went home our weapons dealers and torture lovers delighting in support for the death of people they don’t know or want to simply because they don’t know how to get money with out taking it from someone by force, is that supposed to includes mutilations? In my humble opinion that alone are terrorist activities as much as severed hands, ears, heads, or making a case with nothing more than an obsession justified by lies.

[Keith Richard Radford Jr]

The truth about the sex offender registry will come out soon enough. When it does, People will see how the use of the registry was created, and by exactly who and why and the devastation it has created and the worthlessness of the use of it. It’s origin in the Crow laws that brought disgrace to our nation allowing thieves and murderous societal bigots who have trashed any shot at making good of a program in its design to make money destroying our nation and its people. We can not play god and we can not survive using this behavior model because we are compounding the problem.

It's a ruse designed by people who are getting rich off the castration/hysterectomy/health care/physic care of people through sex laws that have gone wild. What about the people who are being used by the Medicare programs that requires these mutilations for both men and woman after they take their means of support? Can't you see? You have created the model and it is worthless! Why don't you just indiscriminately kill people you don't know that’s statically the next sex offender because over 90% of all new offences are people not on the sex offender registry and the numbers are increasing not decreasing so as a behavior model the chumps put together is really screwed up and they were told before they tried it. So what is the use of such laws as the sex offender registry other than to terrorize people? With the murder of so many sex offenders and the continued

[Keith Richard Radford Jr]

Getting to maters that mater is something we seem to be able to get down to humbly; I would like to share this with you. This from my life experience is a true connection to the ties of races through our own sex laws which have been built on misconceptions and myth.

The Supreme Court just ruled on sex offender laws where some factions of our government think by some inert reasoning that sex offender should be quarantined like some virus steaming from draconian/Islamic law sex offenders should be executed. I have seen for myself, video taken in another country where a sex offender is placed on a pole much like the Catholics use to use a pyramid shaped object and have them sit on it and spin, the pole travels through the body looking for the throat but if not found its ok cause the sharpened end of the pole will come out somewhere. The heritage of the act is in its self a throwback to troglodyte’s who are so obsessed with sex they can find that the way to deal with the issue is as revolutionary, as war, and two wrongs don’t make a right but has in fact called up deep rooted issues of people who have had to put up with this kind of "hierarchy" of historic hysteria far to long. A word taken from hysterectomy, hysteria is tied to castration used to make animals less threatening right? Good old Monty Hall. Well no wonder it’s wrong, right?

Anyway we are supposed to be the most advanced nation and we still have a death penalty when the rest of the world except for nations we are still warring with, {think!} While other nations went home our weapons dealers and torture lovers delighting in support for the death of people they don’t know or want to simply because they don’t know how to get money with out taking it from someone by force, is that supposed to includes mutilations? In my humble opinion that alone are terrorist activities as much as severed hands, ears, heads, or making a case with nothing more than an obsession justified by lies.

The truth about the sex offender registry will come out soon enough. When it does, People will see how the use of the registry was created, and by exactly who and why and the devastation it has created and the worthlessness of the use of it. It’s origin in the Crow laws that brought disgrace to our nation allowing thieves and murderous societal bigots who have trashed any shot at making good of a program in its design to make money destroying our nation and its people. We can not play god and we can not survive using this behavior model because we are compounding the problem.

It's a ruse designed by people who are getting rich off the castration/hysterectomy/health care/physic care of people through sex laws that have gone wild. What about the people who are being used by the Medicare programs that requires these mutilations for both men and woman after they take their means of support? Can't you see? You have created the model and it is worthless! Why don't you just indiscriminately kill people you don't know that’s statically the next sex offender because over 90% of all new offences are people not on the sex offender registry and the numbers are increasing not decreasing so as a behavior model the chumps put together is really screwed up and they were told before they tried it. So what is the use of such laws as the sex offender registry other than to terrorize people? With the murder of so many sex offenders and the continued disregard for life by the use of the registry it’s just a mater of time before the federal government will be held liable for the deaths through federal court.

In a nation where a statement may have a double or triple meaning and our entire linage can be traced through mud, guts, and beer it’s nice once in a while to get the picture of what is meant instead of what some thinks someone may have implied. So it is from the trenches to the hill. Remember the game where someone says something in someone’s ear then passes it the same way to the next; the person advocating such destructive laws are the ones who need to be section 8 by simple brake down of the issue not sex offenders. Best regards