California Penal Code §261 defines rape as “an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person not the spouse of the perpetrator.” The definition also includes an extensive list of circumstances.

Perhaps the most common of these circumstances applies to sexual intercourse that is accomplished “against a person’s will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury on the person or another.” It is also rape when a person is “prevented from resisting by any intoxicating or anesthetic substance, or any controlled substance, and this condition was known, or reasonably should have been known, by the accused.”

There are many other, less-common forms of rape – such as when a person submits to sexual intercourse “under the belief that the person committing the act is the victim’s spouse” and the offender takes specific actions to induce such belief. As if the Penal Code isn’t complex enough with its various definitions of rape, it gets even more complex by defining certain terms associated with the offense – such as “duress” and “threatening to retaliate” and “menace.”

In addition, obviously, conviction of rape carries severe criminal penalties. All of this is why you or a loved one charged with rape needs the very best legal representation – the kind of representation provided by the Law Office of Ronald G. Brower.