Unbelievable legal argument

I recently gave up alcoholism as my primary hobby, which means I now have an extra 10-12 hours a day to kill. That's a lot of time. I can only perfect my already pristine bowling stroke so much, watch so many movies, and spend so much time at the gym a day. So I've been left with no other choice than to read a lot more for law school. Which has been a more rewarding use of time than I expected - every now and then, you end up reading some pretty amazing shit.

Check it - People v. Liberta (NY, 1985). The facts of this case are interesting enough (The dude's a wife beater, wife gets a restraining order, the guy tricks his wife into letting him into her hotel room, then rapes her). But what's really amazing is the legal argument that his lawyer came up with for his defense.

At the time this case came up, New York (and a lot of other states) had a "marital exemption" clause in their criminal statutes for rape, basically saying that a husband couldn't be convicted of raping his wife (I know, ridiculous for 1985, but you'd be surprised at how long old laws stay on the books).

Now for this exemption to apply, the dude has to be married, obviously, but also has to be living with his wife. He was found guilty because at the time, the restraining order meant that he wasn't living with the wifey.

This is where it gets good. On appeal, he (his lawyer) argues that the criminal statute that includes the marital exemption violates the Equal Protection clause. Now I skipped all but two Con Law classes to go bowling so everything I know about the constitution comes from Wikipedia, but Equal Protection has something to do with the state not being allowed to discriminate based on arbitrary classifications i.e. race, sex, marital status, age, being pregnant, blah blah. So what does this clown argue? He says that since husbands (currently cohabiting with their wives) are "allowed" to rape their wives, he's being unfairly discriminated against for not being a cohabiting husband because he's not protected from prosecution for raping his wife, and that violates Equal Protection.

I can't bring myself to believe that any lawyer actually thought this would work. I'm hoping he just wanted to bill the asshole rapist for extra hours. If it isn't obvious by now, the court basically laughed at them, and then just struck down the "marital exemption" part of the criminal statute. One nice thing I've learned in law school is that courts are pretty good at finding ways to get the bad guy, although this was a pretty easy case.

Time for yoga class. Holla.