A recent Michigan Court of Appeals ruling classifies adultery as a felony punishable by life in prison, the Detroit Free Press reported.
"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel quoted by the Free Press on Monday. "But we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion.
"Technically, any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I," the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal code, the paper reported.
The ruling stems from the case of a Charlevoix, Mich., man accused of trading Oxycontin for sexual favors with a cocktail waitress.
Lloyd Waltonen received four years in prison after prosecutors successfully tried him on a little-used statue that makes a person guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct whenever "sexual penetration occurs under circumstances involving the commission of any other felony."
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