Section 18 Rape and Sodomy

• Library: Criminal Code Revision History & Overview 2014

The rape and sodomy statutes present a unique situation in which some recommended changes in the proposed Revised Code were enacted earlier than the remainder of the Revised Code. The following changes were enacted in 2013, as part of House Bill 215, with an effective date of August 28, 2013, rather than the Revised Code effective date of January 1, 2017. H.B. 215, 97^th Gen. Assembly, 1^st Reg. Sess. (Mo. 2013). Nevertheless, they reflect some of the universal changes with respect to nomenclature, lesser-included offenses, and gradation of penalties found elsewhere in the Revised Code. This same pattern can be found in the revisions made in the Original Code, in which scattered offenses with disparate names were combined or consolidated into different degrees of a single offense.

For example, the pre-Revised Code contained the separate offenses of “forcible rape,” which penalized forced sexual intercourse, and “sexual assault,” which encompassed sexual intercourse without consent. Sexual assault was not a lesser-included offense under forcible rape. Under the Revised Code, forcible rape is reclassified as “rape in the first degree,” § 566.030 (amended), while sexual assault is reclassified as “rape in the second degree,” § 566.031 (amended).

House Bill 215 also provides that a person violates the law when engaging in sexual conduct with another person who is incapacitated, is...