I hope Genarlow Wilson is set free this month!

[Catherine Vincent]

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2007/09/01/edwilson_0901.html

Wilson closer to fateful ruling

In teen-sex case, state's high court must see 10 years in prison is cruel, unusual

Published on: 09/02/07

During the Georgia Supreme Court hearing on the Genarlow Wilson case, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears asked a pertinent question: "Where is the justice?" Georgians may soon learn the answer to that question. The high court is expected to rule this month on whether Wilson's 10-year sentence for oral sex with a willing younger teen constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Wilson was convicted of engaging in oral sex with a classmate at a wild 2003 New Year's Eve party in Douglasville; he was 17, the girl was 15. That age difference allowed prosecutors to charge Wilson with aggravated child molestation, which by a temporary quirk in Georgia law at the time carried a mandatory 10-year sentence that cannot be commuted by the parole board or the governor.

Wilson has been offered a plea bargain that would release him from jail, an offer that still stands. However, he has rejected that option because under state law he would still be categorized as a sex offender, with serious consequences for his future.

As a result, Wilson sits in the Burruss Correctional Training Center in Monroe County and waits for the Supreme Court's verdict. A lower court has already ruled in his favor, concluding that a mandatory 10-year term constituted cruel and unusual punishment for a relatively minor crime.

"The fact that Genarlow Wilson has spent two years in prison for what is now classified as a misdemeanor ... and will spend eight more years in prison is a grave miscarriage of justice," Monroe County Superior Court Thomas Wilson ruled.

....more

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board ([e-mail])

[varkam]

1. I think it's also just as telling...

that he's willing to sit in prison rather than be classified as a sex offender. It's a catch-22 situation. It seems fairly ludicrous to me that we're putting people like that on the sex offender registry rather than focus on people that are actually threats.