No. Genarlow Wilson will soon be free. From the New York Times, Georgia Supreme Court Frees Man in Sex Case;
The Georgia Supreme Court today ended the 10-year prison sentence of a man who was convicted in 2003 of having consensual oral sex with another teenager. The court said the harsh sentence violated the Constitution’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.A generation of illiterate and pathological ideologues have polluted America's body of law with legislation so poorly crafted that every American no matter how innocent can be charged, tried, and convicted of one morals charge or another with impunity by prosecutors so devoid of ethical fortitude that justice seems more like a drive by government assassination attempt than a fair and impartial process.
In a 4-to-3 ruling, the court’s majority said the sentence was “grossly disproportionate” to the crime, which the justices said “did not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children.”
The inmate, Genarlow Wilson, who is now 21, was 17 when he was caught on videotape having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a drug- and alcohol-fueled New Year’s Eve party in 2003. He was released this afternoon.
Mr. Wilson was convicted of aggravated child molestation for the act, a charge which carried a mandatory minimum prison term so harsh it shocked his jury and prompted an international outcry from critics who charged that prosecutors had been overzealous and racially motivated. The law, critics said, was meant to keep child molesters behind bars, not to curb teenage sexual activity.
This court's conclusion and accurate assessment of this boy's punishment is a glimmer of hope in a republic waste deep in corruption, scandal, and political filth. When justice is served so infrequently and in such meager helpings one can be sure that prayers are not being answered. It is time for Americans to demand and expect more of the lawmakers and the courts.
2 comments:
People seem to forget the Genarlow Wilson case involved six males and two girls. One of the two girls, a 17-year-old, claimed she was raped. The evidence included an amateur videotape showing Wilson engaging in sex with the 17-year-old and then being offered and receiving consensual oral sex from the 15-year-old girl. According to press reports, the 17-year-old looks sleepy or intoxicated in the video, but never asks Wilson to stop. Waking up naked and disoriented the next morning, the 17-year-old claimed to have been raped.
Five of the six males charged with raping the 17-year-old admitted their guilt, accepted plea bargains and never went to court. Wilson was the only one who decided to take his chances in court. A jury acquitted Wilson of raping the older girl, but convicted him of aggravated child molestation against the 15-year-old. They had no other choice, since the 15-year-old girl was under the age of consent.
The parents of the 17-year-old probably view Wilson's acquital on the rape charge as an injustice, but he was acquitted. Therefore, the 10-year sentence for consensual oral sex does seem overly harsh. However, a 17-year-old in Nebraska recently received a similar sentence on child pronography charges for videotaping himself engaged in sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend, who was over the age of sexual consent. The police seized the videotape in the Wilson case, so at least it's not being distributed around the schoolyard, showing up on U-Tube or on pronographic websites.
The quirkly thing about the court ruling that freed Wilson is that other teenagers, including white onesw, remain in Georgia prisons for engaging in consenual oral sex with underage girls. Only Wilson gets a get out of jail free card.
Wilson is scheduled to go on CNN to tell about his quest for justice. Wonder if they will show the video? Making videotape of 15-year-old girls engaged in sex violates child pornography laws, but these laws, it seems, are based on outdated moral values. CNN could just edit out the raped 17-year-old, but would probably have to get permission from the 15-year-old parents. This shouldn't be a problem. What modern-thinking parents would object to a group of males getting their 15-year-old daughter drunk and videotaping her performing oral sex? Isn't this normal teenage behaviour?
We have to stop treating youthful indiscretions as crimes. We know that teenagers are incomplete human beings - their brains are still forming as are their bodies.
They don't get to choose the fact that their bodies have passed the puberty stage or that their hormones are running wild. and they all believe that they can handle adult situations. They can't, not ever.
Many of them survive by sheer co-incidence the adult situations they get themselves into (unprotected sex, drugs, and reckless abandon).
Now, you claim that the 17 year old claims to have been raped. Rape to me is serious, serious stuff. It is about abuse of power, willfully forcing usually with violent intent one person on another, and it is malicious in intent and action.
I have yet to see in your description of the video where that happens. Furthermore, if it did happen then why did the State free five rapists who never even went to court? These are supposedly admitted rapists!
I'll tell you why. Because it is wholesale bullshit. We have a group of teens all of whom act irresponsibly and wake up confronted with a video of themselves in compromising situations.
None of the authority figures are bright enough to defuse the situation instead insisting dumb-assed, irresponsible kid behavior rises to the criminal excesses of murders, rapists, and hard-core sociopaths. It's rape - yeah, THAT'S THE TICKET! Eight teenagers willfully partying with drugs and beer with the intent of enjoying themselves are suddenly confronted by the hardcore, unforgiving, and rabid law enforcement complex who get extra points from media and voters to unsparingly punish anybody who crosses their path. THEY GOTS THE LAW on their side!
Aggravated child molestation. Age of consent. We're talking about teenagers . Which brainiac in the attorney's office decided to apply this law to that situation? How is the spirit and intent of the law apply to consensual sex between two incomplete teens?
The parents of the seventeen year old have no say in the matter. They LOST because... it was bullshit.
Is ten years too harsh? Ten days is too harsh. This boy's exposure to such rampant stupidity is too harsh.
In today's Courant, a serial pornographer was sentenced to 27 years in prison for... "raping children, filming the assaults, sharing the pictures with friends and compiling a child pornography collection consisting of thousands of images.
Although he was accused of a wide range of criminal behavior that stretched over decades and involved boys on both the East and West coasts, Craig A. Middlemass, 58, was sentenced on a single count of production of child pornography."
This was real CP including "images [that]portray sadism, masochism or other violent conduct".
When society is so dumbed down as to treat youthful indiscretion as willful criminal activity we are in trouble as a society.
And we are in trouble. We have allowed lawfully-illiterate legislators all over the country to create and pass "laws" that are little more than entrapment magnets for innocent people to get ensnared in. Why? Because it serves a religious fundamentalist agenda whose God would rather punish innocents without mercy that to allow them to live their lives as they see fit. The Nebraska sentencing is as cruel and unusual as this one.
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