Also known as: carnal knowledge of · carnally know · carnally knowing · carnally knew · sexual intercourse · unlawful carnal knowledge
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
The act of sexual intercourse. At common law the phrase denoted the required physical act in rape and required only slight penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ.
Cameron Cruz and an accomplice broke into a home intending robbery. During the crime the accomplice engaged in sexual intercourse with the resident without consent. The resident died from injuries sustained in the struggle. The prosecution relies on the completed act of carnal knowledge to trigger the presumption of extreme indifference required for murder liability.
Carmen Choi testified that Curtis Cannon, not her husband, entered her apartment and had sexual intercourse with her by force. The prosecution must prove the element of carnal knowledge occurred without effective consent to establish the completed offense.
After Charles Cunningham suffered severe injuries in an accident caused by Cedar Creek Farms, his wife Cassandra Cooper sued for resulting harm. The complaint alleges that the injuries produced permanent impairment of capacity for sexual intercourse and seeks damages for loss of society and services.
Chloe Chen attended a party where Curtis Cannon secretly added a sedative to her drink. While she was unconscious he had sexual intercourse with her. The prosecution alleges the completed act of carnal knowledge under circumstances that rendered consent impossible.
Police arrested two men in a private residence after observing them engaged in oral sex. The defendants challenged the statute criminalizing the conduct as an unconstitutional intrusion on intimate conduct traditionally described using the phrase carnal knowledge.
In August 1982, respondent Michael Hardwick was charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult male in the bedroom of respondent's home. After a preliminary hearing, the District Attorney decided not to present the matter to the grand jury unless further evidence developed. Hardwick, who identified as a practicing homosexual, then brought suit in the Federal District Court challenging the constitutionality of the statute insofar as it criminalized consensual sodomy. He asserted that the Georgia sodomy statute, as administered by the defendants, placed him in imminent danger of arrest. The District Court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, relying on Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney for the City of Richmond, which the Supreme Court had summarily affirmed. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed. The appellate court held that the Georgia statute violated respondent's fundamental rights because his homosexual activity is a private and intimate association beyond the reach of state regulation by reason of the Ninth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It remanded for trial. John and Mary Doe were also plaintiffs in the action. They alleged that they wished to engage in sexual activity proscribed by the statute in the privacy of their home and that they had been chilled and deterred from engaging in such activity by both the existence of the statute and Hardwick's arrest. The District Court held that because they had neither sustained, nor were in immediate danger of sustaining, any direct injury from the enforcement of the statute, they did not have proper standing to maintain the action. The Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal. The Georgia statute at issue, Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-2, provides that a person commits the offense of sodomy when he performs or submits to any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another. A person convicted shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than twenty years. Because other Courts of Appeals had arrived at judgments contrary to that of the Eleventh Circuit, the Supreme Court granted the Attorney General's petition for certiorari questioning the holding that the sodomy statute violates the fundamental rights of homosexuals.
View caseTwo men were convicted under a statute prohibiting deviate sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex. The Supreme Court held that the statute violated due process because private consensual sexual conduct between adults, including acts once labeled carnal knowledge, lies within a protected liberty interest.
In Houston, Texas, officers of the Harris County Police Department were dispatched to a private residence in response to a reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment where one of the petitioners, John Geddes Lawrence, resided. The officers observed Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. The two petitioners were arrested, held in custody overnight, and charged and convicted before a Justice of the Peace. The complaints described their crime as "deviate sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man)." Texas Penal Code Ann. § 21.06(a) (2003) provides that a person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. The statute defines deviate sexual intercourse as any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person, or the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object. The petitioners exercised their right to a trial de novo in Harris County Criminal Court. They challenged the statute as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and of a like provision of the Texas Constitution. Those contentions were rejected. The petitioners, having entered a plea of nolo contendere, were each fined $200 and assessed court costs of $141.25. The Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District considered the petitioners' federal constitutional arguments under both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. After hearing the case en banc the court, in a divided opinion, rejected the constitutional arguments and affirmed the convictions. The majority opinion indicates that the Court of Appeals considered our decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), to be controlling on the federal due process aspect of the case. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider three questions. The petitioners were adults at the time of the alleged offense. Their conduct was in private and consensual.
View caseNo. Only slight penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ is required. Emission is not necessary to complete the act.
No. The common law marital exemption provided that intercourse by a husband with his wife did not constitute rape because the woman could not be married to the man who committed the act.
The Model Penal Code replaces the archaic phrase with the term sexual intercourse and defines it to include intercourse per os or per anum with some penetration however slight.
Yes. If the defendant through fraud caused the victim to believe that the act was not sexual intercourse then the resulting intercourse constituted rape.
…same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. The State of Texas convicted respondents Lawrence and Garner of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of the statute and, in a 5-to-4 decision, the Texas Court of Appeals affirmed. The court considered Bowers v. Hardwick , 478 U. S. 186, controlling and held that the statute…