The South Dakota Supreme Court issued a ruling on bigamy yesterday. Yes, bigamy!
Michael Clements and Kristi Anderson got married in North Dakota in 2009. Anderson filed for divorce on April 15, 2011. Then 38-year-old Clements and 18-year-old (warning! warning!) Alicia Bjerke applied for a marriage license and got married at the Brown County Courthouse on June 14, 2011. Clements's divorce had not been finalized, so the state charged him with bigamy. (Seriously, Michael, Alicia, you couldn't wait?)
Clements looked at SDCL 22-22A-1, which says marrying someone while married to someone else makes you guilty of bigamy. Then he looked at SDCL 25-1-8, which says a bigamous marriage is "null and void from the beginning."
Light bulb! Fiat lux! Void ab initio!
Clements turned to the court and said that if a bigamous marriage is null and void from the beginning, then it never really happened, and the South Dakota can't charge him with a crime. Bigamy, said Clements, is legally and logically impossible in South Dakota!
Circuit Judge Scott P. Myren bought it. Our Supreme Court did not:
Dismissing the information on the basis that bigamy is a legal impossibility nullifies the statute providing for criminal prosecution of bigamy. We construe statutes together to give legal effect to all ofthe provisions in the statutes. See In re Collins, 85 S.D. at 382, 182 N.W.2d at 339. When presented with similar cases, other courts have determined that legal impossibility cannot be a defense to bigamy. “In other words, civil statues rendering bigamous marriages void ab initio do not exonerate defendants charged with bigamy[.]” United States v. Ali, 557 F.3d 715, 721 (6th Cir. 2009) [Justice Glen A. Severson, South Dakota Supreme Court, State v. Clements, 2013 S.D. 43, 2013.06.12].
Close, but no cigar.
p.s.: Clements and Bjerke stayed married for two weeks.
The man must not be real smart. I could give more of an opinion, but I don't know if certain people will be reading this and it would be pretty obvious who I was talking about.
Good thing we've got that Constitutional Amendment to keep our marriages sanctimonious and limited to those the Family Heritage Alliance deems worthy.
Cory, did you just write this so you could show off your knowledge of Latin? You have funny ways to amuse yourself in the educational off-season.
Heck no, Curtis! I'm just quoting the court. I am immensely amused, particularly to see a guy clever enough to come up with a trick logical argument like this foolish enough to marry a teenager before his divorce is final, only to divorce her two weeks later.
I would give the latin credits to Clement's lawyer (Marshall Lovrien of Aberdeen) who I will put in my flimsy mental Rolodex in case I get a traffic ticket in Aberdeen (which would be quite a feat, requiring fine legal representation).
None of our business, but I would guess sweet Alicia hit the road when she found out about out of state spouse #1. Wouldn't blame her either.
And, Cory, easy it on the Schadenfreude - in South Dakota, where there are only two degrees of separation, you just may find yourself in the fishbowl someday. :-)
Why is it a "trick logical device"? Seems to me it indicated a fundamental problem with South Dakota law that the court refused to recognize. I too think the guy has personal life problems for sure, but it appears the SD Supreme Court has some severe logic problems or a desire to support law no matter how inane or unnecessary.
Curtis, didn't you get the NSA memo? We all live in the fishbowl.
In South Dakota there is sixty day period (used to be called a "cooling off period" between the time that a divorce action is started and the time that a decree of divorce can be entered. I don't know, but because of this law, it doesn't seem possible that a couple could be married only two weeks. It seems like the shortest possible marriage in South Dakota would be 61 days. Of course, since the marriage was void ab initio, perhaps someone got a judge to do an annulment (a different thing from a divorce) in a shorter period of time.