In Bolivia, North Carolina, former teacher Leah Gayle Shipman, 42, was spared a criminal trial on statutory rape of a student on a rather novel ground: she married the student. Shipman married Johnnie Ray Ison, 17, after divorcing her husband of 19 years. Ison married with the consent of his mother.
Shipman divorced her husband six days before marrying Ison. Under North Carolina law, a spouse cannot be compelled to testify against his or her partner in a criminal case.
Shipman was originally charged with sexual offense with a student, statutory rape and taking indecent liberties with a student.
Shipman pleaded guilty last month to resisting an officer and was given a 30-day suspended jail sentence.
In 2009, the North Carolina Supreme Court limited the privilege to exclude conversations in public — even when no one else was present to hear the conversation. However, in this case, the prosecutors concluded that the key evidence supporting the charges could not be admitted. That is an interesting twist since presumably those statements were made before they were married but would have to be attested to on the stand. Presumably however she will have to stay married for the duration of the statute of limitations on the crime since a divorce could still result in her former students being called as a witness. In North Carolina, there is no statute of limitations on felonies so I expect that there will be a lot of pressure by one party to make this marriage work.
Source: CBS
Twang of banjos?
That is the pigs farting in our enormous farms.
And the smell is not from magnolias but pig skit, paper mills, and moonshine yeasting.
Does meth smell? According to a source here the people who make are not in good shape either. Maybe the BO reeks for miles.
Rafflaw,
A shame we don’t get to see a photo of the victim. Two dogs bent on doing something will do it, this time they were caught and exposed by a former victim. Jealousy rules.
With a son like that you are glad to let somebody else take him over as their problem. He was needing a mother, the perp was needing a steady source, and the mom offloaded.
So it goes.
“Is North Carolina in the Bible Belt?”
It never left it. I had hoped that the economic immigrants over the last 50 years to the Research Triangle could change that. But then maybe they were looking for fellow christian extremists, and not just money.
Woosty,
“Hormones are powerful things.”
And a Norwegian girl who said it had never happened before, in the middle of a string of very rapid alliances. Her breath verified her activities. The rest was a matter of believing her words. Censored.