The V.I. Supreme Court overturned a man’s conviction for aggravated assault under the territory’s domestic violence statute this week, saying that section of the law violates the U.S. Constitution by giving differing penalties based solely on the gender of the perpetrator.
In 2011, defendant, Patrick Webster was convicted of aggravated assault and
battery and disturbing the peace, both as acts of domestic violence, and unauthorized use of a
vehicle. The court convicted Webster based on testimony that he woke his mother at 1 a.m., demanded the keys to her car, ransacked her room, shoved her repeatedly onto the bed and ultimately took her car, after disabling her landline and stealing her cell phone. His mother went to a neighbor’s house to call 911 and was treated for scratches and bruises after the incident.
In a March 5 opinion, written on behalf of the court by Associate Justice Maria Cabret, the court upheld the disturbing the peace and unauthorized vehicle use convictions, but overturned the assault charge. Cabret wrote that section of the law "violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by making all assaults committed by a male against a female aggravated assault."
The law – Title 14 V.I.C. Section 298(5) – says “[w]hoever commits an assault and battery … being an adult male, upon the person of a female … shall be fined not more than $500 or imprisoned not more than one year.”
Cabret wrote "the Superior Court committed plain error in convicting Webster under this statute," but "the evidence was sufficient to support his convictions for disturbing the peace and unauthorized use of a vehicle."
While the law can take physical differences into account when classifying violent crimes, the V.I. law does not do this, she wrote.
"Instead, this provision makes any assault committed by a man upon a woman an aggravated assault regardless of the physical differences between the attacker and the victim, providing no additional protections to a man assaulted by a physically stronger woman, or a woman assaulted by a physically stronger woman," she wrote in the court’s opinion. "By using sex as a proxy for the relative physical characteristics of the attacker and the victim, (that section of law) rests entirely on “archaic and stereotypic notions” that have been specifically rejected by the United States Supreme Court."
She cited the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan. Cabret quoted from that case, saying "if the statutory objective is to ‘protect’ members of one gender because they are presumed to suffer from an inherent handicap or to be innately inferior, the objective itself is illegitimate.”
