State v. Marvin Kaiser

In May 1981, the 16-year-old stepdaughter of Martin Kaiser (defendant) reported that Kaiser had raped her. Kaiser spoke with law-enforcement officers, who gave him of his Miranda warnings. Kaiser met with his attorney and, despite the attorney’s instruction, waived his Miranda rights. Kaiser confessed to the rape allegation. The state of Washington (plaintiff) charged Kaiser under the state’s incest statute. At trial, Kaiser denied the intercourse and claimed that he had falsely confessed to protect his family from publicity. The stepdaughter testified that the sexual intercourse had occurred but expressed confusion about the defense’s question concerning penetration. The stepdaughter’s boyfriend testified that the stepdaughter had disclosed to him that Kaiser had raped her. The trial judge admitted Kaiser’s confession into evidence after deeming the confession was voluntary. Kaiser was found guilty. Kaiser appealed on multiple grounds, including that the evidence presented was insufficient and improperly admitted. Kaiser also argued that the incest statute was unconstitutional because it violated his equal-protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Kaiser claimed that the statute’s prohibition on intercourse based on affinity, rather than just consanguinity, was not rationally related to the government’s objective in passing the statute, which Kaiser claimed was to prevent mutated births. Kaiser also claimed that the incest statute unconstitutionally violated the Equal Protection Clause because it punished an individual for engaging in incestuous intercourse with an individual under 18 but the state’s consensual-intercourse statute punished an individual for engaging in sex with an individual under 16.