AP article reprinted in its entirety.
By JOHN HANNA
The Associated Press
Friday, October 21, 2005; 11:29 AM
TOPEKA, Kan. -- Kansas cannot punish illegal underage sex more harshly if it involves homosexual conduct, the state's highest court ruled unanimously Friday in a case watched by national groups on both sides of the gay rights debate. The Supreme Court sided with convicted sex offender Matthew R. Limon. In 2000, he was sentenced to 17 years and two months in prison because, at 18, he performed a sex act on a 14-year-old boy. Had one of them been a girl, Limon could have faced only 15 months behind bars. The high court ordered Limon to be resentenced as if the law treated illegal gay sex and illegal straight sex the same, and it struck language from the law that resulted in the different treatment. A lower court had said the state could justify the harsher punishment as protecting children's traditional development, fighting disease or strengthening traditional values.
Writing for the high court, Justice Marla Luckert said the Kansas law specifying harsher treatment for illegal gay sex is too broad to meet those goals. "The statute inflicts immediate, continuing and real injuries that outrun and belie any legitimate justification that may be claimed for it," Luckert wrote. "Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest."
Court records say his encounter with a boy identified only as M.A.R. was consensual, but Kansas law makes sex with someone under 16 illegal. Limon's juvenile record had two similar offenses. Had M.A.R. been a girl, the state's 1999 "Romeo and Juliet" law would have applied. It specifies short prison sentences or probation for sexual activity when an offender is under 19 and the age difference between participants is less than four years _ but only for opposite-sex encounters. He and M.A.R. lived at a group home for the developmentally disabled. In court, an official described M.A.R. as mildly mentally retarded and Limon as functioning at a slightly higher level but not as an 18-year-old.
You have to wonder, really, what state purpose could have possibly been served by sentencing a mentally handicapped teenager to spend decades in prison for something that was only nominally a crime, and that would have been likely only a probation offense if committed by hetrosexual teenagers.
I hope (and possibly even pray) that Phil Kline, idiot general ... er, that is, attorney general of Kansas, once and for all, finally lets this go. Given that the US Supreme Court sent this case back to Kansas on remand with an almost explicit instruction to the Kansas courts to reverse the sentence in light of Lawrence v Texas (which two lower Kansas courts serenely -- and bafflingly -- ignored), it's highly unlikely that they would agree to hear an appeal. If they did agree to hear the case, it would likely be sent back with one of those rare exceedingly nasty per curiam opinions, the gist of which would be, "We already told you what to do, dipshits. NOW DO IT."
ACLU Applauds Unanimous Kansas Supreme Court Decision Reversing Conviction of Gay Teen Unfairly Punished under “Romeo and Juliet” Law
October 21, 2005
The Kansas Supreme Court today unanimously struck down part of a law that sent a gay teenager to prison for over 17 years, when a heterosexual teen would have served only 15 months for the same act. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Matthew Limon in his appeal, applauded the decision declaring that Kansas’s so-called "Romeo and Juliet" law violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
"As of today, Matthew Limon has already served four years and five months longer than a heterosexual teenager would have received for the same act. He has long since paid his debt to society, and we’re thrilled that he will be going home to his family soon," said Lisa Brunner of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri’s LGBT Task Force. "Justice has been a long time coming in this case."[...]
