Franklin v. State

Franklin v. State, 257 So.2d 21 (Fla. 1971), was a case in which the Florida Supreme Court struck down Florida's sodomy law as being "unconstitutional for vagueness and uncertainty in its language, violating constitutional due process to the defendants." The court retained the state's prohibition on sodomy by ruling that anal and oral sex could still be prosecuted under the lesser charge of "unnatural and lascivious" conduct, thus reducing the crime from a felony to a misdemeanor.

The case involved two men, Alva Gene Franklin and Stephen F. Joyce, who were arrested for committing a "crime against nature" during the early morning hours in a parked car near the St. Petersburg waterfront. Police charged them with a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, for violating Florida Statute 800.01, enacted in 1868, which read:

Whoever commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature, either with mankind or with beast, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison not exceeding twenty years.

In the case of Delaney v. State, 1966, the high court had previously ruled that although the common law meaning of "crime against nature" referred only to "copulation per anum and not per os," the courts of Florida had for decades already maintained that F. S. 800.01 included both oral and anal sex, and that the public could easily find out what the statute meant in that regard:

Pointing out that the statute, without further definition, merely prohibits ". . . the abominable and detestable crime against nature, either with mankind or with beast . . . ," the State logically posed the question whether it is easier for the public, or a defendant, to determine the nature of this crime by researching the history of the common law or the case law of this state. Although the opinions of this court are not always the essence of clarity, and never as lucid as we would have them, in this instance those previously rendered on this subject clearly advise all people that in this state the abominable crime against nature includes copulation either by mouth or by anus. These decisions are certainly more readily available and more easily understood than the common law.

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