While screening a bigamy case, I read the bigamy statute, PC 25.01, and I noticed the following:

"(e) An offense under this section is a felony of the third degree, except that if at the time of the commission of the offense the person whom the actor marries or purports to marry or with whom the actor lives under the appearance of being married is:

(1) 16 years of age or older, the offense is a felony of the second degree; or

(2) younger than 16 years of age, the offense is a felony of the first degree."

As best I can tell, the entire human race belongs in one of the two categories, that is, all people are either under 16 or they are 16 or older. So when would you have a 3rd degree felony Bigamy?

I read it the same way. So too does the annotations for the TDCAA Criminal Laws Book (2007-2009) edition.

Apparently when the legislature changed the statute it went from a Class A misdemeanor to at least a second degree felony.

Consider this another lesson in what happens when legislators pass laws on the fly by amending dead bills onto successful ones without checking the fine print.

In the March-April 2006 issue of The Texas Prosecutor Carolyn and I wrote about a bigamy trial we had just completed. The defendant was placed on probation. He made his initial meeting with probation and then absconded until recently. At today�s hearing on his motion to revoke the judge handed him a year in jail. That was a veritable bargain considering that the same conduct is now a second degree felony.

Back in 1992, when rewriting the Penal Code, the Punishment Standards Commission formed something called a Ranking Committee to rank the relative seriousness of every offense listed in the Penal Code. A new Penal Code came out of that Committee, restoring rationality to the assignment of punishments to crimes.

It sure doesn't take long for people to forget and screw things up.

I'm still waiting for the leg to realize that indecent exposure is way freakier in most cases (and more serious) than public lewdness, yet IE is a class B and PL is a class A. You would think that something for which 2 convictions triggers a sex offender registration requirement would be higher than a class B.

Evolving standards of indecency?

I know it when I see it.