Anyone have any cases where the Def has killed a victim and claimed that it was a consensual act of sex? Have a Def who likes anal sex and when his girlfriends object he chokes them until they pass out.Any articles, thoughts or experts you have would be helpful. My victim didn't die but Def may try to use this strange sex defense.

I had one once where the defendant beat, brutalized, displayed a knife, and forced anal sex on the victim. He claimed she consented and just liked rough sex. When consent was asserted, it opened the door to the testimony of two extraneous victims that he'd sexually assaulted in similar fashion but was never prosecuted for. So see if you have any other victims. The theory is that once the defendant asserts consent on the part of the victim, extraneous sexual assault offenses become relevant to rebut the defensive theory of consent. My jury didn't buy it at all and the defendant got either 50 or 60 years. The case went up on appeal and there's a published opinion from the Beaumont Court of Appeals with a good explanation as to why the extraneous offenses are admissible. The case is Davis v. State. It was published in '98 or '99, I think.

We just prosecuted a 17 year old who strangled a woman while sexually assaulting her. The case plead to two stacked life sentences - one for murder, one for aggravated sexual assault. For the physical evidence of sexual assault prior to death we relied on the pathologist from Southwest(SWIFS) in Dallas. Our defendant didn't claim consensual sex - and did wait four hours to call the police - while he was trying to destroy evidence - then confessed on videotape.

Just about all psychology/sexology texts address this practice. It is known as erotic and autoerotic (yes, by oneself)asphyxiation or the cutting off of blood supply to the brain at the moment of sexual release. It is (suprisingly) well-known and studied and not a few deaths each year are attributed to mistakes, especially during autoerotic episodes (yes, they choke themselves with a slipknot rope while masturbating). You may want to inquire of the victim's previous sexual partners (if any) concerning erotic asphyxiation.

[This message was edited by BLeonard on 03-10-03 at .]

A good text for an overview of this is Sexual Deviance 408-411 (Laws & O'Donohue eds., 1997).