print

Alabama Court Overturns Anti-Sodomy Law

Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals is made up of (left to right) Judges Samuel Henry Welch, Liles C. Burke, Mary Becker Windom, J. Michael Joiner and J. Elizabeth Kellum.

An Alabama appeals court has thrown out a law prohibiting consensual homosexual intercourse, declaring it to be unconstitutional.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ruling, issued last Friday, came in the case of an Alabama man found guilty of engaging in consensual sex with another man in 2010 and sentenced to a year in jail.

The decision cited a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a Texas anti-sodomy law.

Alabama is one of several U.S. states with anti-sodomy laws on its books, some of which have recently come under review.

Last year, Georgia's supreme court upheld the constitutionality of a state law banning solicitation of sodomy.

The case is Dewayne Williams v. State of Alabama, #CR-12-1385.


Reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky; Editing by David Adams and Paul Tait

© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.


To contact us or to submit an article, click here.


Get Charisma's best content delivered right to your inbox! Never miss a big news story again. Click here to subscribe to the Charisma News newsletter.