Crime Against Nature in Louisiana: Penalties and Defenses

Crime against nature in Louisiana is a criminal offense under Revised Statutes 14:89 covering two kinds of conduct: certain sexual acts between people, and sexual relations or marriage between close relatives (incest). Penalties start at a $2,000 fine and up to five years in prison for the base offense and climb to twenty-five years or more at hard labor when a minor is involved or the conduct is aggravated. One important caveat shapes everything that follows: the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas blocks prosecution of two consenting adults for private sexual conduct, even though Louisiana has left that language in the statute.

What the Law Prohibits

RS 14:89 has two operative parts. The first criminalizes what the statute calls “unnatural carnal copulation” between humans, whether of the same or opposite sex. Penetration is not required; involvement of a genital organ of either person is enough. The statute carves out an exception for anal intercourse that occurs under circumstances constituting rape, forcible rape, or simple rape, because those situations are prosecuted under Louisiana’s separate rape statutes instead.¹

The second part addresses incest. It is a crime to marry or have sexual intercourse with a direct ancestor or descendant, a sibling, an uncle or niece, or an aunt or nephew, when the person knows the relationship exists.¹

What Lawrence v. Texas Changed

In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Lawrence v. Texas that consenting adults have a fundamental right to engage in private sexual conduct, protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. States cannot criminally punish private, consensual sexual behavior between adults.²

That ruling makes the consensual-adult portion of RS 14:89 unenforceable. A prosecution of two adults for private conduct would not survive a constitutional challenge. Louisiana never repealed the language, so the statute still reads as if it applies, but no court applying current law would let such a case go forward.

Lawrence does not reach non-consensual conduct, acts involving minors, or incest. Those parts of the statute remain fully enforceable, and the penalties below apply.³

Penalties by Category

The penalty structure is tiered, and the differences between tiers are large. For the base offense between adults, a conviction carries a fine of up to $2,000, imprisonment with or without hard labor for up to five years, or both.¹

When the Victim Is a Minor

Penalties jump sharply when the victim is under eighteen, and again when the victim is under fourteen:

Victim under 18: a fine of up to $50,000, imprisonment at hard labor for fifteen to fifty years, or both.
Victim under 14: a fine of up to $75,000, imprisonment at hard labor for twenty-five to fifty years, or both.

These are mandatory hard-labor sentences. A judge cannot go below fifteen years when the victim is under eighteen, or below twenty-five years when the victim is under fourteen.⁴

Incest

The incest provision scales with the closeness of the family tie:

Parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, or sibling: imprisonment at hard labor for up to fifteen years. No fine option.
Uncle-niece or aunt-nephew: a fine of up to $1,000, imprisonment with or without hard labor for up to five years, or both.

Closer blood ties draw the harsher penalty, and the direct-family tier has no fine-only path.¹

When the Charge Becomes Aggravated

A separate statute, RS 14:89.1, creates the more serious charge of aggravated crime against nature. It applies when the conduct involves force, threats, weapons, incapacity to consent, or a significant age gap with a minor, and it also covers sexual abuse of a child by a family member.

An offense is aggravated under the first category if any of these are true:

The victim resisted and was overcome by force.
The victim was prevented from resisting by threats of serious, immediate bodily harm.
The offender was armed with a dangerous weapon.
The victim had an intellectual or mental disability making consent impossible, and the offender knew or should have known.
The victim was incapacitated by a narcotic or similar substance, whether or not the offender administered it, and the offender was aware of the condition.
The victim was under seventeen and the offender was at least three years older.

The second category targets familial sexual abuse of anyone under eighteen by a biological, step, or adoptive relative, including parents, grandparents, siblings, half-siblings, uncles, aunts, nephews, and nieces. Consent is not a defense to this category.⁵

The aggravated penalties are among the harshest in Louisiana’s criminal code:

Force, threats, or incapacity (first category): imprisonment at hard labor for three to fifteen years, with no probation, parole, or suspended sentence.
Familial sexual abuse of a minor (second category): a fine of up to $50,000, imprisonment with or without hard labor for five to twenty years, or both.
Familial sexual abuse where the victim is under thirteen and the offender is seventeen or older: imprisonment at hard labor for twenty-five to ninety-nine years, with at least twenty-five years served before any possibility of parole, followed by lifetime electronic monitoring after release.

For most defendants, that last tier functions as a life sentence.⁵

Sex Offender Registration Consequences

A conviction under RS 14:89 can trigger sex offender registration, and the statute preserves all registration obligations tied to a crime against nature conviction, including those predating the 2018 amendments.¹

If you were ordered to register on or after August 15, 2010, RS 15:553 bars you from several categories of work. You cannot:

Drive a bus, taxi, or limousine for hire.
Work as an in-home service provider entering residences.
Work as a door-to-door salesperson or solicitor of any kind.
Operate carnival or amusement rides, if the underlying offense involved a child.

Violating these restrictions is itself a serious crime, carrying a fine of up to $10,000 and five to ten years of hard labor, with three years served before any possibility of parole.⁶

Registration also brings housing limitations, community notification requirements, and barriers to professional licensing. These collateral consequences often last far longer than the prison sentence.

Defending Against the Charge

The right defense depends on which part of the statute is being charged. If a prosecution targets consensual conduct between adults, the defense is straightforward: the charge is unconstitutional under Lawrence v. Texas, and a motion to dismiss on Fourteenth Amendment grounds should end the case.²

For the enforceable charges, defense work usually focuses on evidence. These offenses often occur in private, so the prosecution’s case tends to rest on testimony and circumstantial proof. Defense attorneys may challenge how evidence was collected, the reliability of witness statements, or, in an incest case, whether the prosecution can prove the defendant knew of the familial relationship.

In aggravated cases built on alleged incapacity, the defense may contest whether the victim was truly unable to consent or whether the defendant reasonably knew of the incapacity. For charges involving an age gap with a minor, a mistake-of-age defense is generally not available under Louisiana law, which makes those cases particularly difficult to defend once the ages are established.

Anyone facing a charge under RS 14:89 or RS 14:89.1 should talk to a Louisiana criminal defense attorney early. The gap between the base offense and the aggravated tiers is wide enough that charging decisions and plea posture can change the outcome by decades.

1
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Code RS 14:89 – Crime Against Nature
2
Justia. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 US 558 (2003)
3
Legal Information Institute. Lawrence v. Texas
4
FindLaw. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 14 Section 89 – Crime Against Nature
5
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Code RS 14:89.1 – Aggravated Crime Against Nature
6
Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 15 RS 15:553 – Prohibition of Employment for Certain Sex Offenders