Lawyers for the former St Paul School student convicted last month of several sex assault charges are arguing that lawmakers never intended a former New Hampshire prep school senior to spend as long as seven years in prison for using online messages to invite an underage freshman girl for sex as part of an unofficial “senior salute” school tradition.
Attorneys for Owen Labrie, who was convicted of misdemeanor sex charges but acquitted of aggravated rape at the prestigious St Paul School in Concord, asked a judge to throw out his felony conviction for using a computer to lure a child for sex.
He was 18 and the girl was 15 during their 2014 encounter in a science building attic days before his graduation. He testified he had a crush on the girl for months and had previously dated her older sister.
“It is dubious that the legislature intended to increase the penalty sevenfold simply because the offender used a computer in furtherance of the underlying misdemeanor offense,” Labrie’s attorney JW Carney Jr said in a motion.
Labrie, a straight-A student and soccer team captain who lost his full scholarship to Harvard following his arrest, also faces lifetime registration as a sex offender if judge Larry Smukler allows his felony conviction on the computer crime to stand.
Prosecutors said they will respond in court. They have 10 days to file their response as the case moves toward sentencing set for 29 October.
Advocates for sexual assault victims have begun a public campaign to convince the judge to uphold the jury’s 28 August verdict.
Amanda Gray Sexton, who is director of public policy for the NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, argued in a column published last Sunday in the Concord Monitor that the law was amended to apply to this kind of case.
New Hampshire lawmakers “fully understood what they were doing: strengthening the law to respond more effectively to sexual predators”, Sexton wrote.
“When a high school senior uses electronics to aggressively solicit underage freshmen (with whom they have no real relationship) for sex, that’s not normal or acceptable teenage behavior. That is predatory.”
The Monitor argued in an editorial that the law should not apply to Labrie.
Labrie’s attorneys also asked the judge not to require Labrie register as a sex offender for life as required under the felony charge.
Lifetime sex offender registration for Labrie would amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited under the constitution’s eighth amendment, Carney argued.
“If he had merely called the 15-year-old on the telephone or spoken to her in person, there would be no additional crime. Yet because he prearranged the encounter though email and Facebook, he will be subjected to the scrutiny and humiliation of sex offender registration for the rest of his life,” the attorney told the court.
Labrie’s conviction on three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault and one count of endangering a child’s welfare carry a maximum sentence of one year each.
The jury rejected his testimony claiming he had a consensual romantic encounter with the girl but did not penetrate her.
The girl testified she willingly took off her clothes down to her underwear but did not agree to intercourse and told Labrie, “No”, several times.
The dean of the prep school and several of Labrie’s friends testified a “senior salute” was an ambiguous tradition in which seniors of both genders would ask underclassmen to meet in the waning days of a school year. The invitation could range from a walk around campus to sex, students said.
Jurors were shown a Facebook message that Labrie sent to a friend saying he had used “every trick in the book” to seduce the girl.
St Paul has since removed his name from a list of Class of 2014 graduates engraved on a wall.
