Today, an inquest found that TV presenter Kristian Digby suffered “death by misadventure” as a result of auto-erotic asphyxiation gone bad. Meanwhile in Canada, a court case ponders whether a person can consent, in advance, to the consequences of breath-play. Here’s part of the article from the Ottawa Citizen:

‘…The Ontario Crown is bringing the appeal to the Supreme Court after the province’s appeal court ruled earlier this year that a man, identified only as J.A., was not committing sexual assault when he and his on-again, off-again partner of seven years engaged in “erotic asphyxiation” one night in May 2007…

…The case reaches the Supreme Court more than a decade after it ruled that there is no such thing as implied consent.

In written legal arguments, J.A.’s lawyer invokes the words of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who in 1968 famously declared that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation … what is done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code.”

The woman took her complaint to Ottawa police two months after the alleged assault, when she was seeking custody of the couple’s toddler.

At trial, she testified that she agreed to be choked unconscious to “spice up” their sex life. After being knocked out for about three minutes, she came to and discovered J.A. had inserted a dildo in her anus, an act she said she had not agreed to in advance. She later recanted her testimony.

J.A. was originally sentenced to 18 months after an Ottawa judge said it was against the law to have sex with an unconscious person.

Restoring his conviction would effectively render “every touching of a sexual nature that occurs while a person is sleeping or unconscious a criminal act, notwithstanding the consent of the supposed victim,” J.A.’s lawyer, Howard Krongold, argues in his court submission…’

Full article here.