Matthew Limon's sentence overturned

Just yesterday, in my post about the Supreme Court's "Texas v Lawrence" decision, I said:

I hope that this ruling will also overturn the odd "Romeo and Juliet" laws, such as the one Kansas has, where penalties for cases involving statuatory rape are reduced if the individuals involved are teens and within a few years of each other - but the reduced penalties only apply for heterosexual couples. As a result, a young man who - had his partner been female - would have been sentenced to 1 year in jail, instead was sentenced to 17 years.

Well. It sure didn't take long. The New York Time reports today that the Supreme Court Justices have voided the 17 year sentence given to Matthew Limon and sent the case back to the state courts to be reviewed.

The court's directive today that the Kansas courts reconsider the Limon case with Lawrence v. Texas in mind was tantamount to an instruction to set aside the prison term imposed on Mr. Limon, and perhaps to take a close look at what has been called the state's "Romeo and Juliet Law."

The way the law was structured, older teens who engage in sexual activity with teens can be given less severe punishments than would normally be given for statutory rape - but only if the couple was heterosexual. For gay couples, the stiffer penalties still applied.

In returning the case to the Kansas courts, the Supreme Court is essentially saying that not only is it unconstitutional to make acts that are legal for heterosexuals illegal for homosexuals, but also that when it comes to sex crimes, the punishment for a crime committed by a homosexual must be comperable to the punishment for the same crime when commited by a heterosexual.

I know many writers have commented on just how huge this decision is - but I'm not sure if we've really got a good grasp yet on the potential scope it could have. Justice Scalia, in his dissenting opinion, almost laid out exactly how the ruling can be used to challenge the ban on gay marriage, and the principles behind the decision - including the idea that, while many may find a certain kind of private behaviour to be immoral, they do not necessarily have the right to force that morality onto society at large through the use of criminal law - may have implications in a variety of other cases. Some have even suggested that it may have implication for the legalization of medical marijuana, among other issues.

The other bit of good news out of this is that the decision was by a 6 to 3 margin. There's been a lot of speculation that at least one, possibly two, Justices may soon announce their retirement. The most likely suspect is Cheif Justice Rehnquist, with Justice O'Conner considered a good possiblity also. Even if both do retire and are replaced by right-wing idealogues, there would still be at least 5 of the Justices who created this ruling on the Court, which would give an advantage to other cases that may make use of this as a precedent. Granted, there are many other issues where a change of even one member could tip the balance the other way, but there would at least be enough members left who support the principles in this case to have a profound influence on other, similar cases.

Posted by thorswitch at June 27, 2003 06:53 PM | TrackBack