FailureMag.com has a pretty good piece about the latest issues with Ben, and what they think may end up coming down the road for he and the Steelers. Here’s a tidbit on it:
Ben Roethlisberger — starting quarterback for the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers and a two-time Super Bowl winner — is potentially in more trouble than most observers realize. Big Ben’s forthcoming meeting with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell aside, the media continues to underplay the potential seriousness of the allegations against him, and the impact it might have on his career and his employer. For those of you who remain unaware, in early March Roethlisberger was accused of sexual assault by a 20-year-old student; the alleged assault taking place at a nightclub in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Point #1: Everyone seems to assume that because the allegations have been described as “sexual assault,” that a rape charge is not a possibility. I’m not so sure. I reviewed the Georgia Code (2009) in LexisNexis, and “Chapter 6: Sexual Offenses” includes a wide range of offenses, approximately a half-dozen of which could come into play in Roethlisberger’s situation:
There’s rape, which “shall be punished by death, by imprisonment for life without parole, by imprisonment for life, or by a split sentence that is a term of imprisonment for not less than 25 years and not exceeding life imprisonment, followed by probation for life.” There’s also sodomy and aggravated sodomy, as well as public indecency, solicitation of sodomy, sexual battery and aggravated sexual battery. There’s even a crime of fornication: “An unmarried person commits the offense of fornication when he voluntarily has sexual intercourse with another person.” This offense probably hasn’t been enforced in ages, but if there’s any situation in which it might be invoked—this could be it.
Many of the above are felonies and punishable by potentially long prison sentences, and include statutorily-defined minimum sentences.
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mark
March 24, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Death???? WOW!!!
DrGeorge
March 29, 2010 at 8:34 am
FailureMag.com is hardly a reliable source of legal advice or information. Merely reading the printed code ignores the entire body of case law that interprets it. The Georgia code and the quoted article do not represent the current state of the law.