HELP US OVERTURN THIS MINNESOTA SUPREME COURT RULING THAT HAPPENED ON MARCH 24:

TW: SA and r***

"The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned a Maple Grove man’s felony conviction for sexual assault because the victim got herself drunk before the incident.

Francois Khalil, then 20, picked up an intoxicated woman outside a Dinkytown bar in 2017, took her back to a North Minneapolis home and had sex with her after she passed out on a couch, according to court records. A Hennepin County jury in 2019 convicted him of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Khalil’s attorney argued the felony charge does not apply because that statute is for cases in which the victim had drugs or alcohol administered to her without her agreement.

A divided Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed Khalil’s conviction, but the state Supreme Court disagreed, overturning the conviction and granting Khalil a new trial.

Justice Paul Thissen wrote that the prosecution’s interpretation of third-degree assault “unreasonably strains and stretches the plain text of the statute.”

Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Paul Thissen
The relevant section of third-degree criminal sexual conduct applies to cases where the victim is “mentally incapacitated” due to drugs or alcohol that was “administered to that person without the person’s agreement.”

Thissen wrote that the Legislature clearly intended to limit the statute to situations where the victim did not voluntarily drink to intoxication. Rather, it’s for situations where the victim was “given alcohol surreptitiously (for example, when someone ‘spikes’ a punch bowl at a party),” he wrote.

Thissen acknowledged that a “commonsense understanding” of mentally incapacitated could include someone who drank voluntarily yet “cannot exercise judgment sufficiently to express consent” to sex. But that’s not how the statute was written.""

Link to the article: Verges, Josh. “Felony Rape Charge Doesn't Apply If Victim Got Herself Drunk, Minnesota Supreme Court Rules.” Twin Cities, Twin Cities, 25 Mar. 2021, www.twincities.com/2021/03/24/felony-rape-charge-doesnt-apply-if-victim-got-herself-drunk-supreme-court-rules/