Supremes Decline to Hear Gay
Sex Case
The Associated Press,
January 19, 2005
The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to review an Air Force
lieutenant’s criminal conviction for having sex with a 15-year-old boy,
which the officer contended was protected by a previous court decision
overturning state statues that criminalized gay sex.
Justices, without comment, rejected the appeal by Second
Lt. Ryan W. Davis. He pleaded guilty to consensual sodomy and conduct
unbecoming to an officer in military court after an April 1997 meeting with a
boy at a park in Gulf Breeze, Fla.
Davis was subsequently dismissed from the Air Force,
confined for 24 months and ordered to forfeit all pay and allowances.
Davis had asked the Supreme Court to overturn his
conviction following its 2003 decision in Lawrence
v. Texas. That ruling struck down state statutes criminalizing gay sex
as a violation of an individual’s constitutional right to sexual privacy.
The case is Davis v. U.S., 04-817.
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