## Facts

- Harold Locke entered a female neighbor’s apartment late at night under the pretext of using the telephone.
- After entering, Locke produced a butcher knife, forced the victim to partially disrobe, and compelled her to submit to cunnilingus performed by him twice.
- Locke was convicted in a Tennessee trial court of “crime against nature” under Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-707 and sentenced to five to seven years’ imprisonment.
- Locke contended that the statute’s undefined phrase “crime against nature” was too vague to cover cunnilingus and therefore violated due process.

## Issues

1. Whether Tennessee’s “crime against nature” statute is unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause as applied to forcible cunnilingus.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment granting federal habeas relief and upheld the conviction.
- The Court held that the statute was not unconstitutionally vague as applied because it provided sufficient warning that the charged conduct was prohibited.
- The Court relied on the common-law usage of “crime against nature” and Tennessee courts’ prior constructions applying the statute broadly to unnatural sexual acts.
- The Court concluded the application to cunnilingus was not an unexpected or retroactive expansion of criminal liability.

## Legal Principles

- Due process requires that a criminal law provide fair warning so that ordinary people can conform their conduct to what the law forbids.
- A broadly phrased criminal prohibition is not void for vagueness if, as construed by state courts and informed by common-law meaning, it gives sufficient notice of the conduct covered.
- Prior, public judicial interpretations applying a statute broadly can defeat claims that a later application is an unforeseeable judicial enlargement prohibited by due process.
- Vagueness analysis may turn on an as-applied inquiry: whether the defendant had fair notice that the specific conduct at issue was criminal.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Tennessee’s “crime against nature” statute gave adequate notice, through common-law meaning and established state judicial constructions, that cunnilingus was proscribed, and therefore the statute was constitutionally definite as applied to Locke’s conduct.


Rose v. Locke, 423 U.S. 48 (1975)