A former Western Heights High School coach, the 33-year-old Nash faces five counts of second-degree rape and forcible oral sodomy after a 16-year-old student told police she had been having sex with him.
The age of consent is 16 in Oklahoma unless it involves teachers and other school employees, an exception that Nash’s attorney, David Slane, said is unconstitutional.
Slane said the law should be rewritten to apply only to teachers and other school employees who hold some sort of power, control or influence over the student. He noted that his client was
not the girl’s teacher when the alleged incidents occurred, although
Nash coached the basketball team for which the girl was a volunteer
assistant.
Moreover,
Slane has noted, the teen testified earlier this year that she consented
to all of the sex acts and even acknowledged initiating contact with
Nash.
Slane pointed to
a recent Arkansas case (insert Ozarks joke here) in which a man’s
conviction of second-degree assault against a student was overturned
because she was 18 and had a constitutional right to privacy.
“The reason the [Oklahoma] law is unconstitutional is that if two people are of age of consent …
they have a constitutional right to privacy, which includes sexual relations,” Nash told The Oklahoman.
While
this isn’t exactly the “if she’s old enough to walk to the store, she’s
old enough to get bred” argument, we still can’t imagine the contention
would be a popular one for any school to tell parents wanting to know
why it’s OK for the creepy old janitor to sodomize their 16-year-old.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2012.