Does the law really make us dumb?
"The fact that someone says... you should go home and have sex with that person, seems to me, doesn't rise to the level of coercion"
-- Aric Cramer, a Utah criminal defense attorney
If a 14 year old girl in a male-dominated, tightly-knit community is told she has to marry a given man, she does not have the same freedom of choice as a 26 year old woman who is struggling to decide whether to remain in a difficult marriage; yet Aric Cramer seems to suggest that the system of law we have in America cannot tell the difference between these two situations.
In NPR's report Trial Begins for Polygamist Warren Jeffs, attorney Aric Cramer says the issues in this trial are problematic because Jeffs is being charged as "an accomplice to rape" and that usually implies physical force rather than mere verbal instruction.
Cramer adds, "It kind of casts a pallor on marriage counselors, on religious leaders, on anybody who's involved in trying to help people with marriages if they tell a husband or spouse to go home and stay with that other husband or spouse, behave as a married couple, then they could be charged as an accessory to rape."
Cramer is suggesting that the law can see no difference between the social situation of a dependent minor in a subordinate situation and a grown adult in an egalitarian relationship.
He even acknowledges the prosecution's argument that the minor in this case was in a situation where the psychological pressures were so great as to be described as "mind-control."
If Cramer can't see how context makes a difference, either his legal thinking is off track, or he is telling us American law is a hopeless wreck!
