Bowers V Hardwick Case Study

In the court case of Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, two men were arrested for having sexual relations with one another in what they believed was the safety of their own home. Harris County deputies were told that there was a potentially dangerous, armed man in the building who was trying to harm the individuals in the facility, resulting in them barging into Lawrence’s apartment. Instead of finding the deranged man, they claim to have witnessed John Lawrence and Tyron Garner engaged in sexual intercourse. Under the Homosexualty Conduct law in Texas, they were both arrested and charged with the offense of a Class C misdemeanor. The beginning of the court case started to unravel once Lawrence and Garner attempted to appeal their conviction in …show more content…
For example, the Bowers v. Hardwick case was where Michael Hardwick was given a citation by Officer Torick for public intoxication. An error occurred with Hardwick’s court date, and he ended up missing it. This caused the court to issue a warrant for his arrest. Officer Torick ended up intruding Hardwick by entering his home without a warrant and catching Hardwick and his partner engaged in sexual activity. Despite Hardwick and his partner having consensual oral and anal sex in the privacy of their home, their actions were still considered criminalized. They were both arrested under Georgia’s sodomy law and were almost sentenced to imprisonment, until District Attorney overruled the prosecution since the warrant had expired and also believed that the sodomy charge was unfair. In result, Michael Hardwick wanted to sue the Attorney General of Georgia, Michael Bowers, for the sodomy law that he was unjustly charged with. When this case went to the Court of Appeals, it was deemed to have been unconstitutional through Georgia’s statute. According to McBride, even though the lower court deemed this as unconstitutional, the Supreme court could not find a law that accepted “homosexual sodomy” as a fundamental right and rejected Hardwick’s

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