Bigamy is the act or condition of a person marrying another person while still being lawfully married to a second person and it is illegal in the United States. The crime is punishable either by a fine, imprisonment, or both, according to the law of the individual state and the circumstances of the offense.[4]
According to the Model Penal Code (section 230.1) bigamy is a misdemeanor, but having more than one spouse at the same time is a felony if it is done "in purported exercise of a plural marriage..." According to Joel Feinberg in Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, "Righteously flaunting one's illicit relationships, according to the Code, is apparently a morally aggravating circumstance, more punishable than its clandestine and deceptive counterpart."[5]
The Model Penal Code allows people to use an honest belief that they are only married to one person as a defense against a charge of bigamy. However, many US courts (e.g., Turner v. S., 212 Miss. 590, 55 So.2d 228) treat bigamy as a strict liability crime: in some jurisdictions a person can be convicted of a felony even if reasonably certain there was only one legal spouse. For example, if a person has the mistaken belief that their previous spouse is dead or that their divorce is final, they can still be convicted of bigamy if they marry a new person.[6]
