In Lubbock law, date rape is classified as a sexual assault. Anytime somebody makes sexual contact and elicited an unwanted sexual act on a part of the body of somebody else, it is rape. Whether or not there is a dating relationship and whether or not drugs are involved. If it is not a consensual contact. The slang term of ‘date rape’ is describing a situation where there is or about to be a romantic relationship. As if they were at a party or on a date. And it becomes non-consensual or the person has been drugged. If you have been accused of date rape, contact a Lubbock date rape lawyer. An adept defense attorney can work to build a solid case for you.
Finding Evidence in a Date Rape Case
It is difficult to secure sources of credible evidence/testimony in date rape cases. Because these cases often involve situations that involve drugs or alcohol. Because the defendant, the plaintiff, and the witnesses may have been under the influence. It makes all of their memories more suspect. It can be hard to find other witnesses or evidence when people that were there do not remember what happened.
Penalties for a Date Rape Conviction
One potential penalty for a date rape conviction in Lubbock is prison time. The sex assaults where somebody puts their genitals or penetrates somebody else’s genitals without their consent start as a second-degree felony, so the person could have prison time of up to 20 years.
If the person has priors or other aggravating circumstances, those can enhance it to a first-degree felony where the person is looking at life in prison. If the person does not get prison time, the person could still end up with probation. The maximum amount of time on probation a person can get is 10 years. If the person gets probation, they could still be serving some shock time in the county jail first and they would be required to register as a sex offender.
Date rape penalties do not differ much from other rape penalties. There would have to be different facts involved in the case, like prior history or if it happened more than once, but those are not elements of the offense. It would not enhance the punishment.
Case Mistakes
A person might not hire a Lubbock date rape lawyer because they are not taking the date rape charge seriously. They know if they believe that the act was consensual or an act never occurred and they believe this is all a misunderstanding so they do not take it seriously. They might not hire an attorney.
This is a mistake because the potential punishments of consequences are so severe for a sex assault cases, the person is risking a lot if they do not take it seriously. Also, if somebody makes an outcry and a person tells anybody, especially a figure of authority, it gets to a prosecutor’s office if there’s been an outcry of a possible sexual assault.
Those allegations are taken so seriously. Even a situation where the alleged victim is not sure what happened or is not remembering something happened somebody could still end up being prosecuted and in court over that weak allegation because sex offenses are taken very seriously.
Importance of Hiring an Attorney
It is important to hire a Lubbock date rape lawyer who can try to collect evidence in your defense rapidly. There is a lot of evidence that needs to be obtained from the beginning of a case. It can take months to charge somebody and the statute of limitations is for years. So the prosecutor can wait a longer time to charge somebody.
It is not rare for an alleged victim of a sexual assault to wait years to come forth and speak out about it. Inside the time when somebody is charged years later. Any evidence that the person might have had that could defend them could be long gone. And witnesses could have died or moved out of the state.
An attorney can also start working with the police department and the prosecutor’s office to see if there is a way to resolve the case, especially if it is a misunderstanding, without a charge being filed. If you hire somebody early enough, you can be proactive in preventing a date rape conviction.