## Facts

- Gerald Thompson was a high-school principal.
- On more than one occasion, Thompson told a female student she would not graduate unless she performed oral sex on him.
- The student complied because she feared Thompson would carry out his threat and prevent her from graduating.
- After the student graduated, she reported the incidents.
- The State of Montana charged Thompson with sexual assault.
- Thompson moved to dismiss, arguing Montana’s sexual-assault statute criminalized compelled sex only when the defendant used physical force or threatened death, bodily injury, or kidnapping.
- Thompson argued that, even if the allegations were true, a threat to block graduation did not fit any of the statute’s listed means of coercion.
- The trial court agreed and dismissed the sexual-assault charge(s).
- The State appealed to the Montana Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether a threat to withhold graduation constitutes the type of force or threat required by Montana’s sexual-assault statute (i.e., physical force or a threat of death, bodily injury, or kidnapping), so that the charge should not have been dismissed.

## Decision

- The Montana Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal.
- The court concluded that the statute, as written, limited sexual assault based on compelled submission to cases involving physical force or threats of death, bodily injury, or kidnapping.
- Because the alleged coercion was a threat of academic/administrative harm rather than one of the listed forms of force or threat, the allegations did not satisfy the statutory elements of sexual assault.

## Legal Principles

- Courts apply the plain text of a criminal statute and do not add unlisted forms of prohibited conduct.
- When a criminal statute defines an element in specific terms (such as listing particular types of threats), the prosecution must prove the element as defined, not as it might be defined in a broader moral or social sense.
- Ambiguities in penal statutes are read narrowly rather than expanded by judicial construction.
- If conduct appears wrongful but falls outside the statutory elements, the remedy lies with legislative change, not judicial enlargement of criminal liability.

## Conclusion

The Montana Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of the sexual-assault charge because, even accepting the student’s allegations as true, Thompson’s threat to prevent her graduation was not physical force and was not a threat of death, bodily injury, or kidnapping as required by the sexual-assault statute’s definition of compelled submission.


State v. Thompson, 792 P.2d 1103 (1990)