Read the entire article , the felony is not for "adultery".
The felony is for adultery committed in tandem with another
crime, I need to go back to get the exact details of what the crime must be. Its just that there is a difference. No if Joe Blo goes through divorce and he had an affair he will not go to the can for ten years. If he committed a crime such as , paying for the sex and committed adultery that would fall under this ruling. Not simply if he had an affair.
So no technically adultery is not a felony YET . LOL
We can only hope that one day adultery itself will actually be considered a crime.

Sorry, Gandolf. I have to disagree.

The article says that the court ruled that sexual penetration in conjunction with the commission of any other felony is it's own felony -- First Degree Criminal Sexual Conduct. And that Michigan still recognizes adultery as a felony, so sexual penetration while committing adultery (a felony in itself) is a whole new, very serious felony (CSC I).

Check out this paragraph in particular from the article:

"Among the many crimes Michigan still recognizes as felonies, they noted pointedly, is adultery -- although the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan notes that no one has been convicted of that offense since 1971."

And a few other snips from the article:

"anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison."

"any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I," the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal code."

"The provision decrees that a person is guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct whenever "sexual penetration occurs under circumstances involving the commission of any other felony."

"a first-degree CSC charge could be justified when consensual sex occurred in conjunction with any felony, not just a drug sale."

Can you provide a link to the article?

Mr. G

I am one of the most agressive anti afair people anyone will ever meet. I have lost friendships over exposing and have exposed to people I didn't even know when adultery was discovered. But I have a HUGE problem with the courts or legislature having anything to do with this topic. Frankly, it is not up to the government to handle this. I would say that the extent that the courts should get involved in this is hitting the adulterer hard in the wallet or pocketbook. I beleive if you commit adultery that you should forfeit every asset that is owned by the couple... no exceptions. But jail time... please.

The article is derived from Judge Murphy's Footnote 8 of the Waltonen decision in the Michigan Court of Appeals November 7, 2006 which states:


Research the statute if you want to.

W

Personally...I like the jail time part of it. Leave it as a felony. Anyone with a security clearance would lose it because of the felony conviction.

And the jail time may cause some of these WSs pause before doing it...if they knew the stakes were so high!!

Maybe add a clause that allows the BS to offer leniency, since they are the aggrieved party.

While I'd love to see the OP in jail, I can't see this as a prosecutable crime that our already strained judicial system could handle. I do agree that it most certainly should be considered in security clearance determinations.

For punishment, I'd rather they allow the BS some personal time to administer some frontier justice on the OP. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
What about bringing back dueling?

V/r,
No way

YEEEEAAAAHHHHH

We finally agree on an issue. Noodle's points are excellant. It would even be funny to have a adultery offender web registry...but I wouldn't really ever want my FWW on it. Even if we were divorced. OM sure...but not my FWW or even if she were my ex-wife...she's still the mother of my child.

The criminalization of it under the criminal code is certainly over the top. Not really more so than some of the drug laws currently on the books and mandatory sentencing laws but lets not get into that.

Civil penalties. Most certainly. Not as extreme as suggested above because that may just be too inviting for entrapment circumstances...and before you say OMG, adultery through entrapment is impossible, know that I am only considering things like date rape drugs or in some way "agreeing" to swinging and then documenting it as "adultery"...etc...along those lines of thought.

It should also be a factor in custody disputes though I find it difficult to allow a random government official to make moral determinations/measurements about mothers and fathers. Adultery would just be one of many factors to be considered. At the very least it makes the issue relevant and thus the infidel can't be shielded from questions concerning it in open court.

------------------

However, it appears at least one court in Michigan feels the criminal Law IS already applicable to adultery and that their hands are tied until the legislature fixes it.

OK, I looked it up. 1st degree CSC is punishable by life in prison. I'm betting mandatory sentencing rules back it up too.

Mr. Wondering

As I said...I'd add a clause allowing the BS to be the one to decide if there is leniency...since they are the aggrieved party.

If the BS wants to reconcile...then the WS could have penalties lessened or eliminated.

BS wants nothing to do with the WS? Then off to the pokey.

I take a little different take on this, not because of moral issues or religious ones...but because the state has a vested interest in this. How? Because of the severe damage this does to society. Mostly to children...because of the result of divorce from these actions. As my attorney told me...most divorce actions involve some level of adultery! We make adultery a punishable offense...and I am betting the divorce actions lessen. At least, these folks will wait to screw around until after the divorce decree!!

And if we dont put them in jail...at least both the OP and the WS would be held liable to the BS financially. All assets to the BS. And even punitive damages awarded by the court from both the OP and the WS.

As I said...I wouldnt have wanted to see my wife in jail...because as Mr. W said...she is the mother of my children. That is why I offer maybe allowing the BS to have the say on whether there is leniency or not.

But in the end...there was a reason that adultery used to be a capital offense!!

All of society has a vested interest in the emotional health of our society.

Unfortunately legal consequences do not seem to be much of a deterent to other crimes, so I wonder if they would be in the case of infidelity.

I think the best thing, as Mr. W says is it would allow it's relevance in divorce court.

I live in the Upper Peninsula, and we have a very family oriented judge here. I had an acquaintance who's wife ran off with her OM taking his five children and he went right down to the court house, requested an emergency hearing with the judge...

Not too much later a police car showed up at the OM's house, picked up the five children and told the WW that under no circumstance was she to remove the kids from the family home or to have them around the OM again. He's a good judge, and member of society, our judge is.

Which BS? What if the spouse has an affair with an another person -- does that BS have a say in the prosecution of the OP in his/her marriage?

Do you think that both adulterers should receive the same punishment?


Part of the problem is finding ROOM in jail. We all ready lock up a larger percentage of our population than most developed nations.


Can you imagine if we started locking up -- even half of the people who committed adultery? Even if we locked them up for short periods of time and didn't give them life sentences, where are we going to PUT all those people? And, what are we going to do with them when they get out to reintegrate them back as productive members of society?

I'm with MEDC and Mr. Wondering. Giving prison terms for adultery seems like a horrible "solution" to an all ready awful problem.


I guess making it a capital offense would solve the 'finding room in jails' problem assuming we speeded up the time from conviction to execution which probably needs to happen, anyway.

How many people would stop reporting adultery if it meant their spouse was going to be killed?

Mys

I like that judge!!

And Weaver...you may be right. There may not be much of a deterrent. But there is punishment for crimes in our society. And in many states, adultery is a crime. In the military, it is a crime. In the old days, it was punishable by death.

I understand the feelings here, as having my wife back...I wouldnth ave wanted her subjected to that...even with what she did to me. That is why I said maybe we need a BS role in the sentencing.

But most states, the law is a joke. Might as well not be there! Remember, the marriage contract is the only legally binding contract that I know of that has no penalty for breaking the contract in most states.

In Virginia, we have laws for sexual crimes. Even amongst consenting adults. This would be just one of them. Because...again, as far as I am concerned, a WS and OP cannot be consenting adults because they had no right to consent!

BTW...MM

If you allowed a BS to grant or withhold leniency then NO prosecutor would ever want to invest the time and resources into prosecuting such claims.

W

Why not? Do you mean leniency before trial or once conviction has occurred? Can you explain why this would make a difference to the prosecuting office?

Mys

myschae,

Yeah...it would have to be worked thru in that case of two married people in adultery. Which BS decides? What if they disagree? I understand the problem. I guess we would need to noodle this one thru first. Or jsut let the judge take the BS's preference into advisement. I'll have to think on this one.

On prison time...that is not needed. I do think life in prison may be a little extreme..although, as I said, adultery used to be a capital offense. (By the way, I am not proposing it being a capital offense again!!) But, they could be treated as minor felons...accordingly. First offense...they would get probation. Second...something stiffer. Of course, the three strikes law would get them on the third, I believe.

Again, I am not proposing any one avenue. what I am saying is that the adultery laws in most states are a joke! And they need to have REAL teeth. Not only the loss of assets. But also punitive damages. And repeat offenders should be jailed.

I know it sounds harsh. But this society some day should finally deal with this problem in a sane manner instead of just putting its head in the sand.

I think if the BS was approached before trial...then the prosecutor would know.

Kinda like if someone punches me in the mouth. I can tell the police I want to press charges or I can decline to press charges.

The BS is the aggrieved party. They should be able to decide to press charges or decline doing so.

Here is the full new report story, enjoy:

In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."

"Technically," he added, "any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I," the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal code.

No one expects prosecutors to declare open season on cheating spouses. The ruling is especially awkward for Attorney General Mike Cox, whose office triggered it by successfully appealing a lower court's decision to drop CSC charges against a Charlevoix defendant. In November 2005, Cox confessed to an adulterous relationship.

Murphy's opinion received little notice when it was handed down. But it has since elicited reactions ranging from disbelief to mischievous giggling in Michigan's gossipy legal community.

The ruling grows out of a case in which a Charlevoix man accused of trading Oxycontin pills for the sexual favors of a cocktail waitress was charged under an obscure provision of Michigan's criminal law. The provision decrees that a person is guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct whenever "sexual penetration occurs under circumstances involving the commission of any other felony."

Charlevoix Circuit Judge Richard Pajtas sentenced Lloyd Waltonen to up to four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to two felony counts of delivering a controlled substance. But Pajtas threw out the sexual assault charge against Waltonen, citing the cocktail waitress' testimony that she had willingly consented to the sex-for-drugs arrangement.

Charlevoix prosecuting attorney John Jarema said he decided to appeal after police discovered evidence that Waltonen may have struck drugs-for-sex deals with several other women.

Cox's office, which handled the appeal on the prosecutor's behalf, insisted that the waitress' consent was irrelevant. All that mattered, the attorney general argued in a brief demanding that the charge be reinstated, was that the pair had sex "under circumstances involving the commission of another felony" -- the delivery of the Oxycontin pills.

The Attorney General's Office got a whole lot more than it bargained for. The Court of Appeals agreed that the prosecutor in Waltonen's case needed only to prove that the Oxycontin delivery and the consensual sex were related. But Murphy and his colleagues went further, ruling that a first-degree CSC charge could be justified when consensual sex occurred in conjunction with any felony, not just a drug sale.

The judges said they recognized their ruling could have sweeping consequences, "considering the voluminous number of felonious acts that can be found in the penal code." Among the many crimes Michigan still recognizes as felonies, they noted pointedly, is adultery -- although the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan notes that no one has been convicted of that offense since 1971.

Some judges and lawyers suggested that the Court of Appeals' reference to prosecuting adulterers was a sly slap at Cox, noting that it was his office that pressed for the expansive definition of criminal sexual conduct the appellate judges so reluctantly embraced in their Nov. 7 ruling.

Murphy didn't return my calls Friday. But Chief Court of Appeals Judge William Whitbeck, who signed the opinion along with Murphy and Judge Michael Smolenski, said that Cox's confessed adultery never came up during their discussions of the case.

"I never thought of it, and I'm confident that it was not something Judge Murphy or Judge Smolenski had in mind," Whitbeck told me Friday. But he chuckled uncomfortably when I asked if the hypothetical described in Murphy's opinion couldn't be cited as justification for bringing first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges against the attorney general.

"Well, yeah," he said.

Cox's spokesman, Rusty Hills, bristled at the suggestion that Cox or anyone else in his circumstances could face prosecution.

"To even ask about this borders on the nutty," Hills told me in a phone interview Saturday. "Nobody connects the attorney general with this -- N-O-B-O-D-Y -- and anybody who thinks otherwise is hallucinogenic."

Hills said Sunday that Cox did not want to comment.

The Court of Appeals opinion could also be interpreted as a tweak to the state Supreme Court, which has decreed that judges must enforce statutory language adopted by the Legislature literally, whatever the consequences.

In many other states, judges may reject a literal interpretation of the law if they believe it would lead to an absurd result. But Michigan's Supreme Court majority has held that it is for the Legislature, not the courts, to decide when the absurdity threshold has been breached.

Whitbeck noted that Murphy's opinion questions whether state lawmakers really meant to authorize the prosecution of adulterers for consensual relationships.

"We encourage the Legislature to take a second look at the statutory language if they are troubled by our ruling," he wrote.

Hills declined to say whether the Attorney General's Office would press for legislative amendments to make it clear that only violent felonies involving an unwilling victim could trigger a first-degree CSC charge.

"This is so bizarre that it doesn't even merit a response," he said.

Meanwhile, Waltonen has asked the state Supreme Court for leave to appeal the Court of Appeals ruling. He still hasn't been tried on the criminal sexual conduct charge. His attorney said a CSC conviction could add dozens of years to Waltonen's current prison sentence.

Justices will decide later this year whether to review the Court of Appeals' decision to reinstate the CSC charge.

The appeals court decision is available at http://courtofappeals.mijud.net/resources/opinions.htm. Search for Docket No. 270229.

The failure of courts to prosecute has nothing to do with whether or not it is a criminal act and everything to do with the current societal mores.

Which is a pretty spiffy way of saying...we WANT to be able to commit adultery and not provide legal recourse to the people we victimze with it.

Period.

The judges are adulterers...the prosecutors are adulterers...the doctors and the nurses and the teachers and the engineers...the butchers the bakers the candlestick makers...the jury of our peers is GUILTY and does not want to see their own behavior called into question they most certainly do not want to go to jail for it.

There is no other explanantion. We want the freedom to victimize others in this way and we will defend that freedom with callous disdain for the victims.

Any person who tried to force as much on an individual as adultery forces on them would most CERTAINLY be considered a criminal.

Any person who tried to forcibly TAKE as much as adultery takes would be considered a criminal.

If a person punched you they could expect to be a criminal...but if they force a life altering STD on you via rape [because you certainly did NOT consent to sex with their affair partner] ...well...you know..it's unfortunate that these things happen. Maybe you should take a walk and just get over it. Maybe you should get some couseling to help you with "your anger issues".

Is just anger something that SHOULD be suppressed?

Is there any other contract so easily breached? I doubt you could screw over and default to any bank without at least some stiff and durable penalties and possibly even ...yes...some jailtime.

Why?

'Cause we really actually don't want people to do it.

When you apply real civil or criminal penalties to something like adultery...it get's really real. It can bite you back. You can lose...not only your current job but the potential to work ANY job in your field ever again. You may lose the ability to get a loan or be within a certain distance of schools as a result of a sexual offense.

It would affect very seriously people that we don't consider dangerous because we don't take adultery seriously.

We just don't and our laws and social structures not only enforce it...they reflect it very accurately.

The laws are already there. They are already on the books. Nothing NEW needs to happen. They are not enforced by choice and will of the people in a position to do so.

People WE elect. The will of the people will be done...and then we have to live with who we really are and what we said we wanted.

Just for fun you could bring the adultery issue up when people seeking election at all levels are available publicly...

I predict you will hear crickets.

I predict that if you continue to ask these questions you will be easily recognized and denied entry for your disorderly behavior.

Brilliant rant, Noodle!