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ARTICLE · 19 SEPTEMBER 2023

Can obtaining another's consent be used as a murder defence?

Recent case raises an intriguing question: is consent ever a defence to murder?

AustraliaCriminal Law

Just a few weeks short of Halloween in 1996, 35-year-old Sharon Lopatka left her home in Maryland USA, leaving her husband a note which simply read:

If my body is never retrieved, don't worry: know that I'm at peace

Lopatka had found herself going to some dark corners of the internet, meeting a man named Robert "Bobby" Glass and requesting the unthinkable.

She had shared with Glass a sexual fantasy of meeting a man and being "tortured until death".

Her body was found soon after she left her home, with Glass having strangled her to death (seemingly with her consent).

Glass ultimately pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to just over six years'imprisonment.

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