Adultery could mean life, court finds

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.

It doesn’t matter what anybody “expects.” This law should either be rewritten or, better, repealed. What business is it of the state who consenting adults sleep with, in or out of marriage?

There may be a tiny percentage of supporters who might argue in good faith about shoring up the institution of marriage, but for the most part, this is the sort of red meat that religious whackjobs who want to impose their own notions of sin and punishment on the rest of us love to see carried forward by the heavy hand of the state.

And never, ever forget: this law, like all laws, is at bottom backed by the firepower of the state, which reserves the right to kill you if you resist the state’s enforcement of it.

Will this law be changed?  Of course not.  It will stay on the books for those special times some crusading prosecutor (Nifong, anybody?) wants to threaten somebody with criminal charges.  The state is perfectly happy to have every aspect of your life criminalized, and your staying out of prison made entirely dependent upon the discretion - and mercy - of the state.

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