[4] Having been arguing recently and facing threats of violence from John, she had refused to have sex with him and attempted to leave the house.
[5] There were other cases of marital rape charges brought before the courts in the United States prior to this, but they did not involve couples who had been cohabitating.
Burt is quoted saying, “A woman who’s still in a marriage is presumably consenting to sex…Maybe this is the risk of being married, you know?...If this law’s interpretation isn’t corrected it will bring a flock of rape cases under very bad circumstances…The remedy is to get out of the marital situation.”[6] He was found not guilty by a unanimous jury composed of eight women and four men on December 27, 1978.
It also continued conversations on behalf of activists and government representatives on whether or not other states should pass similar laws allowing wives to charge husbands with rape.
However, by 1987, only twelve states had laws allowing wives to charge their husbands with rape without considerations of legal separation or cohabitation.