State v. Rundlett

• Decision Date: 20 September 1978
• Citation: 391 A.2d 815
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. George RUNDLETT.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 815

391 A.2d 815

STATE of Maine v. George RUNDLETT.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Sept. 20, 1978.

David M. Cox, Dist. Atty., Margaret J. Kravchuk, Asst. Dist. Atty. (orally), Bangor, for plaintiff.

Vafiades, Brountas & Kominsky by Susan R. Kominsky (orally), Lewis V. Vafiades, Bangor, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and POMEROY, WERNICK, ARCHIBALD, DELAHANTY, GODFREY and NICHOLS, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

The issue presented by this appeal is whether 17 M.R.S.A. § 3151 (1964), Maine's former "statutory rape" law, ¹ violated the equal protection clauses of the constitutions of the United States (amend. XIV, § 1) and the State of Maine (art. I, § 6-A). Section 3151, now superseded by our new Criminal Code, ² punished males for engaging in sexual intercourse with females under age 14, but did not similarly penalize females for engaging in sexual intercourse with males under age 14. ³

In July 1977 a jury found defendant George Rundlett guilty on three out of four counts of statutory rape. ⁴ Defendant appeals from the judgment of conviction entered on the jury's verdict on the sole ground that the statutory rape law in effect at the time of his alleged offenses was unconstitutional. ⁵

We deny the appeal.

The evidence warranted the jury's making the following findings of fact. The prosecutrix turned thirteen in December of 1975. The defendant taught at the junior high school attended by the prosecutrix and served as her homeroom teacher. One afternoon in October of 1975 the prosecutrix was visiting one of the defendant's daughters at defendant's home. When the defendant's daughter and other children left the house to buy ice cream, defendant invited the prosecutrix into his bedroom and over her protests ⁶ had sexual intercourse with her. During the following five or six months, defendant arranged to meet the prosecutrix secretly on numerous occasions for the purpose of sexual intercourse. These liaisons ended in March of 1976, and a year later the prosecutrix's reporting of defendant's activities to school authorities led to his arrest and indictment for statutory rape.

Defendant asks this court to set aside his conviction on the ground that the statute under which he was convicted, 17 M.R.S.A. § 3151, denied him equal protection of the laws by unlawfully discriminating against him on the basis of sex. Section 3151 in a single sentence defined the crime of rape or "carnal knowledge" of females, both above and below the age of consent:

"Whoever ravishes and carnally knows any female who has attained her 14th birthday, by force and against her will, or unlawfully and carnally knows and abuses a female child who has not attained her 14th birthday, shall be punished by imprisonment for any term of years."

Although the word "whoever" is facially a "gender-neutral" term, this court has defined carnal knowledge as "penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ." ⁷ State v. Bernatchez, 159 Me. 384, 385, 193 A.2d 436, 437 (1963); see also Wilson v. State, Me., 268 A.2d 484, 487 (1970). Furthermore, since the statute expressly designates as possible victims of the crime only Females under age 14, only Males were directly subject to the statute's proscription. ⁸ In short, section 3151 created a classification based on sex. It neither protected males under 14 nor punished females for engaging in sexual intercourse with males below that age.

Of course, sex-based classifications are not Per se unlawful. State legislatures have generally enjoyed "the power to treat different classes of persons in different ways," Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 75, 92 S.Ct. 251, 253, 30 L.Ed.2d 225 (1971), ⁹ unless the legislative classification "is 'patently arbitrary' and bears no Rational relationship to a Legitimate governmental interest." (Emphasis added) Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 683, 93 S.Ct. 1764, 1768, 36 L.Ed.2d 583 (1973). The degree of "legitimacy" or importance of the stated goals and the closeness of the "relationship" between the classification and those goals which are required to pass equal protection muster, have varied with the subject matter of the classification. Thus, the United States Supreme Court has subjected statutes which discriminate on the basis of race to the "most rigid scrutiny," Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 11, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967), while in evaluating a system of financing education which arguably discriminated on the basis of wealth, the Court required only that the "system be shown to bear some rational relationship to legitimate state purposes." San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 40, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 1300, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973).

The degree of scrutiny the United States Supreme Court would have us apply in examining sex-based classifications is still unclear. Although a majority of the Court has yet to add sex to the list of suspect classifications requiring strict scrutiny, ¹⁰ recent cases addressing this question confirm Justice Powell's observation that "the relatively deferential 'rational basis' standard of review normally applied takes on a sharper focus when we address a gender-based classification." Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 211 n. *, 97 S.Ct. 451, 464, 50 L.Ed.2d 397 (1977) (Powell, J., concurring). ¹¹ Craig v. Boren, in which the Supreme Court invalidated an Oklahoma statute that prohibited the sale of beer to males, but not females, in the 18-21 age group, exemplifies the "middle tier" approach. "To withstand constitutional challenge," the Court wrote, "classifications by gender must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to the achievement of those objectives." Id. at 197, 97 S.Ct. at 457.

Using the standard set forth in Craig v. Boren as a guide to the degree of scrutiny required, the question becomes whether the sex-based classification in Maine's former statutory rape law served "an important governmental objective" and was "substantially related" to the achievement of that objective. We find that it plainly met that test. ¹²

A statute emerging from the democratic process inevitably reflects a constellation of interests, aims, and concerns. Identifying the legislature's purposes can become even more difficult when examining a law which, as Maine's former statutory rape provision, stemmed from a statute enacted nearly seven centuries ago. However, the history of our Maine statute does strongly suggest that the lawmakers were motivated by at least two major concerns firmly rooted in the distinctive physiology of young females: their vulnerability to pregnancy and to special physical injury resulting from sexual intercourse.

Youngsters of either sex may experience psychological trauma resulting from sexual intercourse with an adult. But only young females can become pregnant. Furthermore, young females, unlike males, are exclusively and uniquely vulnerable to physical injury caused by the penetration of the adult male sex organ into the vagina. ¹³

The lawmakers' continuing concern with protecting young females from pregnancy and physical injury emerges from an examination of the lengthy history of the statute. Section 3151 had its source "in statutory provisions of the mother Commonwealth of Massachusetts in force long before and at the time of the separation. . . . The statutes in existence at the time of the separation in all essentials were re-enacted in this State in Laws of Maine 1821 . . . ." Moody v. Lovell, 145 Me. 328, 332, 75 A.2d 795, 797 (1950). ¹⁴ In passing its first statutory rape law in October 1669, the Massachusetts legislators expressly stated that the law was necessitated by the fact that "carnal copulation with a woman childe, under the age of ten years, is . . . perrilous to the life and well-being of the childe . . . ." Mass.Colony Laws 15 (1672) (cited in Commonwealth v. Roosnell, 143 Mass. 32, 38, 8 N.E. 747, 750 (1886)). ¹⁵ In short, the special vulnerability of female children to physical injury from sexual intercourse motivated the legislature to extend special protection to that female class. That purpose was carried forward by statutory rape provisions subsequently enacted in Massachusetts until 1821 and in turn by the verbatim Maine provision that survived separation. ¹⁶

After separation, Maine followed Massachusetts closely in modifying its statutory rape law. In 1886, Massachusetts raised the statutory age of consent from 10 to 13. 1886 Mass.Acts 270, ch. 305 (approved June 21, 1886). Barely nine months later Maine followed suit. P.L. 1887, ch. 127, §§ 1, 2 (approved March 16, 1887). In 1888, Massachusetts again raised the statutory age from 13 to 14. 1888 Mass.Acts 401, ch. 391 (approved May 23, 1888). And again, within nine months, Maine enacted the same increase. P.L. 1889, ch. 180, §§ 1, 2 (approved February 14, 1889). In 1893, Massachusetts set the statutory age at 16 (1893 Mass.Acts 1381, ch. 466), this time without provoking a similar change in Maine, and during the next seven decades the statutory rape laws in both states remained without any further change that is here relevant.

The objective of the Maine and Massachusetts lawmaking bodies to prevent pregnancy in young females through their statutory rape laws is manifested by the refusal of both states to follow the lead of other jurisdictions in making the prior chastity of the prosecutrix an element of the offense. ¹⁷ Cf., e. g., Fla.Stat.Ann. § 794.05 (West) (1976); 1 Wharton's Criminal Law § 318 (R. Anderson ed. 1957). The chastity qualifier undoubtedly reflected a belief that once a female below the age of consent lost her virginity, she had nothing more to lose. The rejection of the qualifier by the Maine and Massachusetts lawmakers suggests that the legislators were more concerned with preventing pregnancy than preserving chastity. ¹⁸

The Maine legislature was not alone in recognizing the need to extend special protection to young females. Comparable statutes...