Can a husband be convicted of grievous bodily harm for allegedly forcing his wife into sex without her consent?
The following excerpt is from People v. De Stefano, 121 Misc.2d 113, 467 N.Y.S.2d 506 (N.Y. Cty. Ct. 1983):
1 In Queen v. Clarence, 22 Q.B.D. 23, (1888) (the first English case to explicitly adapt Hale's contractual consent theory) a wife who had contracted gonorrhea from her husband charged him with sexual assault upon the grounds that had she known of his affliction, she would not have consented to intercourse. A majority of seven of eleven judges sitting en banc held that the husband could not be convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm since the forcing of ones wife to have intercourse without her consent is not unlawful. However, one dissenting Justice wrote:
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