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Sparrow, I'm not sure that you can legally consent to being slapped (cropped, whipped, flogged, etc.) because if you could, abusers would legalize their crimes by intimidating their victims into consenting to the violence. The major area of d/s play where consent _is_ legally significant is sex itself. While we may play out a rape scene, it is not legally rape. In contrast, a torture scene is, essentially, legally a form of assault. In England, whence our legal system substantially arose, there was a case in which 16 men were arrested for engaging in sm activities. The 15 tops were charged with assault, the 1 bottom (what a ratio!) was charged with aiding and abetting his own assault. They pleaded consent, but the court rejected this, saying that one cannot give consent to one's own assault.
A useful parallel to illuminate things: If I hand you a gun and ask, tell, dare you to shoot me, if you actually shoot me, you are still committing murder or a related crime, despite my invitation.
One complication to all this: almost all violent crime is handled under state law rather than federal law, and states have, over the years, made different rulings about the exact nature of consent and how it operates in the question of consent to assault. In California, the law stipulates that the only legal situation in which one may consent to assault is in sports, whereas in Iowa, the exceptions include 'sports, social, and other activity'. Despite this, in 1985, an Iowa appeals court specifically ruled that this definition did not include sm, which are a form of assault. In Mass, the courts ruled that consensual sm was not a defense if the tool used was an actual weapon (presumably the dom used a knife for cutting); such a situation was automatically battery. Some states do seem to accept consent as a general defense but have historically been erratic in who can apply it or in what situations (for example, gays seem to have less success with it than straights do).
The infamous Oliver Jovanovic case of 1996 is perhaps the best illustration of the problems that doms face. Jovanovic, a doctoral student at Columbia, negotiated a weekend-long scene with a female student from Bernard, during which he tied her up, tortured her, and had sex with her. She subsequently claimed that she had not understood what he intended to do and that therefore she hadn't really consented to what happened. He was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years to life for kidnapping, assault, and sexual abuse. Eventually, after spending an enormous amount of money and 20 months in prison (during which he was seriously injured by an inmate), an appeals court ruled that the court had inappropriately disallowed evidence that the woman enjoyed sm. In 2001, just as the retrial was set to begin, the women decided not to testify and it was dismissed with prejudice. In 2004, he filed a civil suit against NYC and the prosecutor over the incident. IIRC, it also later came to light that she had done something similar to a previous dom, but charges had not resulted. Part of the reason that the Jovanovic lost the original case was NY's Rape Shield law was invoked. Rape Shield laws forbid the discussion of a rape victim's previous sexual history, and in this case (and in some others) the judge ruled that no discussion of pre-sex negotiations could be admitted into the courtroom. This meant that the defense could not actually present a claim of consent.
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