If She Says Stop, Don't Wait 5 to 10 Seconds...

**KellyMac** · #1 30th-April-2008

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Definition of rape widened

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Consent can be revoked in mid-act, judges rule
By Julie Bykowicz|Sun reporter April 17, 2008

The state's highest court ruled yesterday that a man can be charged with rape if he ignores a woman's calls to stop - even if she had previously consented to sex.

With this expansion of the legal definition of rape, Maryland joins seven other states whose courts have determined that a woman can revoke her consent after intercourse begins.

"This goes to the heart of women's autonomy," said Lisae C. Jordan, legal director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which filed a brief in the matter. "It says that, yes, women do have the right to make decisions about something as intimate as sexual intercourse."

The Maryland Court of Appeals' opinion in a rape case from Montgomery County overturns what defense attorneys and a lower appeals court said was existing common law and the high court's own 1980 opinion.

Related links

PDF: Court of Appeals ruling

All seven judges agreed that a woman has the right to revoke consent, but reached that conclusion in different ways. Yesterday's ruling returns the 2004 rape case of Maouloud Baby to Montgomery County for a new trial.

Baby's case drew the attention of the state's highest court - and of national and state women's groups - when the Maryland Court of Special Appeals overturned his convictions for first-degree rape and other sex offenses in October 2006.

The case stems from a December 2003 incident in which he and a friend, both high school students, had sex with a community college student in an isolated school parking lot.

Baby, then 16, and Michael Wilson, 15, groped the woman and made sexual advances to her, according to police. First, Wilson had sex with the woman while Baby was outside the car. Then, police said, Baby told her it was his turn.

"[So] are you going to let me hit it?" he said, according to police. "I don't want to rape you."

The victim testified in Montgomery County court that she agreed to sex "as long as he stops when I tell him to." As he began, she told him to stop because he was hurting her, but he kept going for five or 10 seconds, she said.

Wilson pleaded guilty to second-degree rape and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Baby denied any wrongdoing but was convicted of first-degree rape and other crimes and sentenced to 15 years in prison, with all but five suspended.

Mel Feit, director of the National Center for Men, based in Long Island, N.Y., said the facts of Baby's case have been lost in the larger argument about a woman's right to say no.

"The courts got it wrong then, and they are getting it wrong now," said Feit, who has followed the Maryland case. "There is no way that anyone is ever going to convince me that a five-second delay is first-degree rape."

He said that he, too, believes that a woman should be able to withdraw consent during sex. But he said the evidence showed that Baby did comply with the victim's demand to stop and that the jury in the case "threw common sense out the window" when they convicted him.

"This is a dangerous ruling," he said. "What the court is saying is that every act of sexual intercourse in Maryland is potentially a rape, and if a man doesn't stop on a dime, he's going to jail."

But women's advocates and lawyers said the high court's ruling was important because it makes clear that Maryland no longer relies on outdated common law in rape cases.

"Common law is an antiquated system where women had less rights," said Marie Lilly, an educator at Turnaround Inc., a Baltimore-based nonprofit for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. "This brings us into the 21st century."

In overturning Baby's convictions, the Court of Special Appeals wrote that the high court's 1980 opinion remained the last word on the subject of withdrawal of consent because neither the top court nor the legislature had since addressed it.

That appeals court, the state's second-highest, sided with defense attorneys who argued that the 1980 opinion held that rape does not occur if consent is withdrawn after penetration.

In arguments in October before the Court of Appeals, the assistant public defender, Michael R. Malloy, said the 1980 opinion was of critical importance and that the Montgomery County judge's failure to mention it during jury instructions in Baby's case was misleading and illegal.

Instead, when jurors asked Judge Louise G. Scrivener whether sex that begins consensually but continues after the woman tells the man to stop constitutes rape, she replied that it was "a question that you as a jury must decide."

At the October hearing, Assistant Attorney General Sarah Page Pritzlaff argued that the judges should overrule the 1980 opinion because it "was wrong in spouting some of that old common law."

The "archaic stereotypes of women and rape upon which common-law rape is apparently premised are obsolete," the state wrote in its appeal.

The high court was itself conflicted about the 1980 ruling.

Four of the seven judges determined that the case had not been a binding precedent, meaning that Maryland law all along has been that rape includes instances where permission is given but later taken away.

"We conclude that post-penetration withdrawal of consent negates initial consent for the purposes of sexual offense crimes and, when coupled with the other elements, may constitute the crime of rape," Judge Lynne A. Battaglia wrote in the majority opinion.

Judge Irma S. Raker and two others found that the 1980 ruling had been binding - but that it should be overturned.

That divergence, plus a lengthy recitation of the history of common law and a discussion of other appellate issues, added up to 76 pages.

Meg Garvin, director of programs for the Oregon-based National Crime Victim Institute, which filed a brief in the matter, said that while she was pleased with the court's opinion, she worried that its message might get lost in the tide of words.

"It would have been stronger and more easily digestible for the public if it had been shorter," she said. "A better answer would have been that a woman should be able to say no at any point in time and that we reject any common-law history to the contrary."

AKUUS · #2 30th-April-2008

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Originally Posted by KellyMac

[b][url="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.rape17apr17,0,6734136.story"]

This is absolute garbage. For the time being, it would be a good idea if "rapes" went unprosecuted. There are so few real rapes and so many bogus rape charges, that more harm comes from prosecuting any of them. Obviously, "rapes" will never go unprosecuted, but if there were to be a hiatus of say three years, it would give feminists, judges, lawyers, and cops some time to think about life and reality. It probably wouldn't work, but it would be worth a try.

Wasn't there a day and age when women had male relatives serve as guardians or even older females serve as chaperones? Now that women are "empowered and independent", they seem to be unable to make up their minds about sex and overly anxious to "cry rape". Like the little boy who cried wolf, women have lost their credibility about rape.

bobx23456 · #3 30th-April-2008

The American Injustice System has gotten so very far from sanity that we need a moratorium on all "rape" prosecutions until the anti-men hysteria subsides and we can restore sanity to the AIS.

Blessings

Bob

yohan · #4 30th-April-2008

What I read here, is just crazy. Such people and such laws...this must go wrong....

All what I want - openly said - is the husband of a wife, legally married, to be protected against such ridiculous situations and rape-charges....marriage should be protected, not only the wife, also the husband should be protected.

Can you imagine:
The wife agrees, and men are not machines, we have also to consider our own situation, and after you, the husband, are in a good mood and start, the own wife says suddenly 'NO' and all what you should do now is to run away....otherwise, 5 seconds later it is 'spousal rape'.

If idiots are accusing each other for 'rape' because of 5 or 10 seconds delay let it be...but please not within a marriage contract.

Feminist_Scum · #5 1st-May-2008

The state needs to stay out of people's bedrooms. It's getting ridiculous.

shaazam · #6 1st-May-2008

it begs the issue who would sign a contract with such a penalty clause

there is one born every minute

**Percy** · #7 1st-May-2008

Courts will make these decisions just so long as people (woman, girls) will make compalints. Females are encouraged to complain. The 'authorities' complain when women don't complain enough for them.

And they will make stupid, intrusive and punitive decisions, increasing in stupidity, intrusiveness and punishment as time continues.

Many woman are stupid. Many are plain bad. Some are 'victims'.

But......

Here were a couple of men/boys who were doing what it stupid too. Stupid and bad.

They imposed themselves, sexually. They went beyond persuation.

It is up to men, wised-up men, hurt men, the newer MRM cautious men to teach boys to keep away from women. Boys - and men - need to know very clearly that sex with any female that they do know know very well, is asking for Hell to open it's gates.

Sex on the hop, or on first date, or any date up to the friggin' thirty-first, is dangerous.

Make women WORK for sex. make them convince you that they are safe women. Make them Prove that they value you, before you even touch them. Make them earn your attentions.

Until then they can get fucked.... preferably by some other dork who will carry the pain aimed at you.

AKUUS · #8 1st-May-2008

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Originally Posted by Percy

Make women WORK for sex. make them convince you that they are safe women. Make them Prove that they value you, before you even touch them. Make them earn your attentions.

Good advice, but it sounds as though the sex pursuit roles have been reversed, don't you think?

**Percy** · #9 1st-May-2008

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Good advice, but it sounds as though the sex pursuit roles have been reversed, don't you think?

The original roles were scrapped by women. In doing so the consciousness of men has been raised and we can see that the old roles were a con.

We were slaves to the pussy and our lives were at women's beck and call. We paid from the first moment of meeting to the last at parting. And looooong after in many cases.

They have rejected our protection and provision. We are freed from ever having to value women higher than ourselves. Let them do the pursuing. Let them fall over themselves trying to convince us out of our skepticism.

Yes, the positions are reversed. But we are only starting.

Not only do women have to value us and work to get us - including getting at our magnificent John Thomases (well, mine at least is magnificent) - but as they insist on taking men's public roles, they can friggin' well provide for us and protect us too. Let them defend countries. Let them do all the dirty work.

Its their friggin' turn in the barrel.

AKUUS · #10 1st-May-2008

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Originally Posted by Percy

The original roles were scrapped by women. In doing so the consciousness of men has been raised and we can see that the old roles were a con.

We were slaves to the pussy and our lives were at women's beck and call. We paid from the first moment of meeting to the last at parting. And looooong after in many cases.

They have rejected our protection and provision. We are freed from ever having to value women higher than ourselves. Let them do the pursuing. Let them fall over themselves trying to convince us out of our skepticism.

Yes, the positions are reversed. But we are only starting.

Not only do women have to value us and work to get us - including getting at our magnificent John Thomases (well, mine at least is magnificent) - but as they insist on taking men's public roles, they can friggin' well provide for us and protect us too. Let them defend countries. Let them do all the dirty work.

Its their friggin' turn in the barrel.

True and hilariously put. Up until now, women wittingly or unwittingly living under feminist rule, have been enjoying male rights while adamantly eschewing our responsibilities. I'm sure once women really get a taste of what it's like living out men's roles, they will abdicate and run back to flowers, doilies, cooking, being needy and everything else.