Police charge pair with 'crime against nature'

Raleigh police are charging two adults for private sodomy, although the U.S. Supreme Court appears to have outlawed such charges five years ago.

Police on Saturday charged two West Raleigh men with a "crime against nature" for having sex early that morning. Each faces up to two years in prison if convicted of the Class I felony.

But that charge might be unconstitutional, and the circumstances are murky.

Raleigh police first charged Nelson Keith Sloan, 40, of Grand Manor Court, who called them to his apartment about dawn, saying he had been attacked.

Police later filed the same charge against Ryan Christopher Flynn, 25, of Glen Currin Drive.

They also charged Flynn with simple assault for biting Sloan, and with communicating threats by telling Sloan he was going to disembowel him.

"This looks like a case of a consensual act that may have gotten out of hand," said Raleigh police Capt. T.D. Hardy. "The law is still on the books. ...What the D.A.'s office will do with it, I don't know."

Sloan insisted he was attacked. "I didn't allow anything," he said Saturday. "They knew it and turned it around and arrested me. I have never been so humiliated in all my life. It's just awful."

Police did not charge Flynn with any sort of sexual assault.

Flynn, who has past misdemeanor convictions, including for assault, could not be reached for comment.

North Carolina's "crime against nature" law doesn't apply only to same-sex partners. But a landmark 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling appears to forbid states from treating private, consensual, adult sex as crimes.

Two months later, the Raleigh Police Department's attorney, Dawn Bryant, told officers they could keep charging people with crimes against nature for committing the acts in public places -- but not in private.