Unlike the legal limit for a DUI, there is no "bright line" for how intoxicated a person has to be to be considered impaired enough to be unable to say yes - or no - to sex, says Jennifer Gentile Long, a former prosecutor and the director of AEQuitas, an organization the provides research and assistance to law enforcement prosecuting violence against women.
The issue is further complicated because sexual assault victims don't typically report to a hospital or police until hours and sometimes days after an assault, making an accurate measurement of their impairment impossible.
"These cases are very difficult," says Long, who prosecuted sex crimes as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia. "Defense attorneys can use a victim's decision to drink on her own and extend it all the way up to blaming her for everything that happened."
But, says Long, prosecutors can get convictions if they ask the jury - or in this case, the judge - to use common sense: "If you're falling down, and vomiting, is that a situation where you'd going to want to have consensual sex with someone?"
Instead of focusing on the alleged victim's state of being, Long says prosecutors will want to focus on what the defendants did in the situation: "If you saw someone sick, vomiting, why would you take her to a strange place? Why isolate her? Why violate her privacy when she was at her most vulnerable?"