The vast majority of citizens in America are not lawyers, and further to this, that vast majority, has never taken a criminal justice course. The thing about the law is that the pursuit of justice, finds that lawyers often desire to make it their point to purposely obfuscate to the general public what should be straightforward and understandable. The reason that this is so, is probably so that lawyers and judges can be seen to be wiser than they really are, and also as a means for justice to be more arbitrarily enforced against those that allegedly violate those suspect laws.
A case in point is statues which have been written into various State Constitutions, such as "assault with the intent to ravish", which are not only poorly constructed as law, but their actual enforcement, is usually quite selective, as well. The most common way to define assault is as reported by law.cornell.edu is "…intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact." That definition of assault, without the incumbent battery of some sort as part of it, such as in assault and battery, makes it fairly subjective in determining whether or not an assault has occurred or not. This is compounded by "the intent to ravish", of which ravish is an old fashion word for rape, and in order for rape to occur requires definite physical contact. In regards to the word, "intent," unless a given person expresses themselves in an unequivocal manner, intent is something that an impartial jurisprudent body would have difficultly, fairly asserting that they indeed know a given person's intent; whereas a given action would be far more straightforward to adjudged, correctly. So then, a statue such as "assault with the intent to ravish" is really one of those statutes set up for the express purpose to take what is probably a very minor incident and blow it up into something significantly more, with subsequently more significant penalties for those found guilty of.
To the point, southern States of the old confederacy, were noted for laws such as this, in which, the implicit point of such a law, was to keep segregated those that were black from those that were white, and especially to keep the now freed black man in his traditional place of obeisance to all that was white, and especially to keep black men fearful of coming into any sort of inappropriate contact, verbally, physically or otherwise, with white women. Additionally, these laws were thought to be needed in order to keep, in particular, those black soldiers that served in the armed forces, consciously aware, that the southern way, had not changed, before or after their enlistment, and that the southern courts, were consequently no respecter of black men.
So then, it should be noted, that certain State laws are passed by specific legislatures in order to utilize therefore that force of law, to, in essence, circumvent Constitutional law, by having the option of using that law in a manner in which those that cross certain unwritten rules and lines, will thereby know their place; by the specific usage of that law, against even those that somehow believed that by their service to their country, that they might expect that country to actually live up to its credo, of life, liberty, and justice for all.