Also known as: rapes · raped · raping
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A criminal offense consisting of sexual intercourse without the victim's effective consent. Effective consent is absent when the actor compels submission by force or threat of imminent serious bodily injury, when the victim is unconscious or substantially impaired by intoxicants administered without knowledge, or when the victim is below a statutory age threshold. At common law the offense required penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ and treated certain frauds and threats as vitiating consent.
Roberto Reyes and an accomplice enter a home to commit robbery. During the crime Reyes forces sexual intercourse on the homeowner at gunpoint. When the homeowner resists and is killed, the prosecution charges Reyes with murder. The killing is treated as murder because the rape supplies the required recklessness and extreme indifference to human life.
Ricardo Rojas is convicted of raping an adult woman who survives the attack. The state seeks capital punishment. The court refuses to impose the death penalty because the sentence would be disproportionate to a non-homicide offense against an adult victim.
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Rebecca Ross accepts a ride from Roland Rhodes after a party. Rhodes pulls the car over, brandishes a knife, and orders her to submit to intercourse. Ross complies out of fear of immediate serious injury. The act constitutes rape because the threat of serious bodily harm vitiates consent.
Rosalind Reed is convicted of raping a child who survives the assault. The state imposes the death penalty. The court vacates the sentence because capital punishment is disproportionate when the crime neither intended nor caused the child's death.
Ruby Rivera is convicted of rape and receives a sentence of life without parole for a first offense involving no additional violence. The court reviews the sentence under proportionality principles and finds it excessive given the gravity of the offense and the defendant's criminal history.
Roberto Reyes is arrested on suspicion of rape and interrogated without warnings about his rights. He makes incriminating statements that are later introduced at trial. The statements are excluded because the interrogation violated constitutional protections against compelled self-incrimination.
Intercourse accomplished by actual physical force or by threats of great and immediate bodily harm constitutes rape. The victim need not resist to the utmost when threats prevent meaningful resistance.
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Fraud that causes the victim to believe the act is not sexual intercourse renders the intercourse rape. A false promise of marriage or other non-sexual fraud does not.
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A woman cannot be convicted as a principal but may be convicted as an accomplice.
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The Eighth Amendment bars capital punishment for the rape of an adult woman or a child when the victim survives, because the penalty is disproportionate to a non-homicide offense.
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…physical deformity or mental deficiency," or that a pregnancy "resulting from legally established statutory or forcible rape or incest may constitute a threat to the mental or physical health of the patient," two other physicians "chosen because of their recognized professional competence have examined the…