New Jersey
History
1704 The
New Jersey legislature, in an effort to quell public discontent with the
government, adopts a law pardoning everyone charged with any but 11 crimes.
Sodomy was not one of the 11 exempted, so all sodomy prosecutions are
abandoned of that date.
1796 In
adopting a new criminal code for the state, the New Jersey legislature makes
that state the first in the nation to use the term “crime against nature”
to refer to sodomy.
1898 In a
new criminal code, New Jersey permits any person to kill someone who was
“attempting to commit sodomy,” whether or not the person doing the killing
was the potential victim. Such killer would be “guiltless, and shall be
totally acquitted and discharged.”
1923 The
New Jersey Supreme Court gets the first rudimentary privacy claim in a U.S.
sodomy case. Two men arrested for “private lewdness” with each other claim
that, because their activity occurred in private, it didn’t debauch the
public. The Court rejects their argument and upholds their convictions.
1957 The
New Jersey Supreme Court rules that sodomy defendants have a right to have
their marital and parental status entered into their trials, something not
seen in any other state.
1960 A New
Jersey appellate court upholds the sodomy conviction of a right-wing
McCarthyite attorney for sex with various teenage males.
1976 The
New Jersey Supreme Court overturns the conviction of two men for having sex in
a car parked in a dark area along a state highway, saying that it was nearly
impossible for them to have been seen by anyone, the first such decision in
the U.S.
1978 After
passage of a new criminal code that repealed the state’s sodomy law, Senator
Joseph Maressa announces a crusade to reinstate consensual sodomy as a crime
only for acts between people of the same sex. After much public criticism, he
withdraws his bill.
News
- After
Lewdness Conviction Is Overturned, Activists Call for Investigation of
Police - The Advocate,
August 9, 2006
A Manhattan gay man's conviction on lewd behavior was overturned by a New
Jersey appeals court Monday, prompting a gay rights advocate to call for
an investigation of police procedure.
- Old
Lewdness Arrest Quashed - Gay City News,
March 9, 2006
- Calls for Probe into Treatment of Gays Arrested
in New Jersey Park - The Associated Press, July 28, 2005
- Disparate Results in New Jersey Lewdness Arrests
- Gay City News,
July 14, 2005
- Gay Rights Leaders Applaud Court
Decision - The Trentonian, June
28, 2003June 28, 2003
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