Adultery Could Get You Life in Prison in Michigan

As if the prisons in the United States aren't overcrowded already, Michigan's second highest court has ruled that anyone involved in an affair can be prosecuted for first degree criminal conduct. This is a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion," according to Detroit Free Press.

Any time a person engages in sexual intercourse in an adulterous relationship they are guilty of criminal sexual conduct 1, which is the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal court, and they could receive up to life in prison.

Attorney General Michael Cox's office successfully appealed a lower court's decision to drop charges against a Charlevoix man, Lloyd Waltonen, who was accused of trading Oxycontin pills for sexual favors with a cocktail waitress, and was charged with first degree criminal sexual conduct Lloyd was sentenced up to four years in prison for delivering a controlled substance, and the sexual misconduct charge was dismissed when the waitress said she consented to the sex for drugs.

The Detroit Free press reported that The Court of Appeals agreed that the prosecutor in Lloyds case needed to only prove the drug delivery and the consensual sex were related. However Murphy went further, ruling that a first degree criminal sexual conduct charge could be justified when consensual sex occurred in conjunction with any felony, and not just a drug deal.

Judges and lawyers suggested that the Court of Appeals reference to prosecuting adulterers was aimed at Cox, noting that it was his office that pressed for the definition of criminal sexual conduct. Chief Court of Appeals Judge William Whitbeck who signed the opinion along with Murphy and Judge Smolenski denied that it had anything to do with Cox.

Lloyd Waltonen has since asked the state Supreme Court to appeal the Court of Appeals ruling. He hasn't yet been tried on the criminal sexual conduct charge, and his attorney said a criminal sexual conduct conviction could add dozens of years to Waltonen's current prison sentence.