Ideally, the legislature would go through all the RSAs and repeal the statutes that punish vices (which are really just offenses against oneself) and sins (which are really just offenses against one’s god).
Of course, with the House so busy reprimanding some representatives for ignoring some of its inane rules¹ (while failing to reprimand other representatives for ignoring other inane rules²), who has time for that?
But there’s a simple way to achieve the same thing, without much effort at all. It’s just this: Preclude the state, or any of its subdivisions, from appearing as the prosecutor in a criminal case.
What would this accomplish? Well, it would mean that you could only be punished for committing a crime that has a victim. For example, suppose Pat rapes Chris. Instead of ‘State v. Pat’, the case would be ‘Chris v. Pat’. Everything else would be the same. The state could provide an attorney to assist Chris with the prosecution, just as it could provide an attorney to assist Pat with the defense. But Chris is the prosecutor, and Pat is the defendant. No problem there.
But suppose Pat pays Chris for sex. Now, neither Pat nor Chris would be willing to prosecute, so there would be no case. ‘State v. Pat’ would be a non-starter, as would ‘State v. Chris’. Similarly if Pat sells Chris some pot, or if Pat and Chris engage in some games of chance, or if Pat sells Chris some beer he brewed without a license, or they engage in any number of other voluntary transactions, there’s no prosecutor, so there’s no prosecution.³
Similarly for voluntary actions, as no one is going to prosecute himself.
‘State’, a fictional entity that hasn’t been harmed — which, indeed, can’t be harmed — is thus forbidden from sticking its nose into voluntary actions or transactions.
Although nothing else would need to change, over time one would expect that criminal laws requiring the state as one party to prosecution would start to be looked at the way we now look at laws against spitting on the sidewalk — as useless artifacts from a more primitive age. Kind of like the DNA that you still have for making gills.
What, you say? This is crazy talk, isn’t it? Well, maybe so, but consider which is crazier: Preventing one party (the government) from being both prosecutor and judge in a criminal case, or allowing that to happen?
¹ Rule 67
² Rule 63
³ In the case of murder, the victim’s estate, or his family, could stand in for the victim.
