Criminal Convictions Question

[premedquestion1]

Hi SDN, throwaway account for obvious reasons. A friend of mine once got pulled over by the police for having sexual intercourse in public. Luckily the cops took pity on them and did not give them a ticket or arrest them at all. However, I was just wondering what adcoms would think if someone was caught for this and charged. Would this end their med school career? Would they need to take significant time between the incident? Or would it be shrugged off as young and dumb similar to underage drinking IA's?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[LizzyM]

This appears to be a hypothetical question and those are very difficult to answer. @gonnif has done a good job. I'd also note that in the bad old days, prosecution of this crime fell most heavily on gay men although someone would have to be a very non-trad (older) applicant for that to be the case but it might garner the sympathies of adcom members who might say, "who am I to criticize" On the other hand, police do have discretion, as demonstrated in your anecdote, and so being charged does make it seem that this rose to a level that made the cops decide to make an arrest rather than give a warning. Whether that was for a justified reason or out of prejudice (see above, also could be applied to inter-racial coupling) could be another mitigating circumstance that we just don't know in a brief, hypothetical story.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

In my experience, probably won’t hinder getting interviews, but could make it harder to get acceptances. This is if it led to a charge. Imo, the actors involved in your hypothetical show worse judgement than those involved in most underage drinking offenses (except for DUI)