A recent ruling in an Oklahoma court is shocking local prosecutors and residents after refusing to criminalize oral sex of a drunken victim.
The case involved allegations that an intoxicated 16-year-old girl performed oral sex on a 17-year-old boy, who offered to give her a ride home. Witnesses recalled that she had to be carried into the defendant’s car after a evening of drinking with friends in Tulsa Park.
The boy later brought the girl, who was still unconscious, to her grandmother’s house, where she was taken to a nearby hospital with a blood alcohol content above .34.
Sexual assault testing later confirmed the presence of the young man’s DNA on the back of her leg and around her mouth. The boy informed investigators that the girl had consented to perform oral sex, although the girl said she couldn’t remember the remainder of the evening after leaving the park.
The 17-year-old boy was charged with forcible oral sodomy by Tulsa County prosecutors, but the judge dismissed the case, noting that prosecutors could not apply the law to a victim who was incapacitated by alcohol, according to the decision:
“Forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation.”
The ruling continues to stand, despite the March 24 appeal, and despite Oklahoma’s separate rape statute that protects victims who were too intoxicated to consent to vaginal or anal intercourse.
