Good coverage of this case can be found at Sex In The Public Square.
I previously touched on this case in this post.
CNN’s most recent article on the case can be found here.
The long and the short of it:
Genarlow Wilson was 17 and got a blow job from a 15 year old girl. He was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in prison under Georgia law for sex crimes, and required to register as a sex offender. He has so far spent 27 months in jail for being a teenager having consensual oral sex with another teenager.
After a public outcry over the insanity of such laws, the Georgia legislature changed the law but failed to make the new law retroactive, so it does not cover Genarlow.
A further attempt to make the law retroactive was rebuffed by the Georgia legislature.
Yesterday, a judge with a bit of sanity threw out the conviction and reduced his sentence such that he would only be guilty of a misdemeanor, would not have to register as a sex offender, and would be released with time served.
The prosecutor quickly appealed the decision to ensure that Genarlow would remain incarcerated.
Though now only a misdemeanor offense, it is still illegal for a 17 year old boy to get a blow job from a 15 year old girl in Georgia.
At what point will unconstitutional Christian Shariah be recognized as the illegal, immoral leftovers from the pre-enlightenment Dark Ages? Reality check – teenagers have sex. Get over it. This country needs to spend its time on education, not enforcement of vestigial superstitions.
Filed under: Biology, Blogs In Our MonkeySphere, Education, Equality, Fundies, Politics, Rants, Religion, Science, Sex
I’m afraid the issue here is a judge who wasn’t quite as brave as was necessary. It seems — and I do wish someone with more legal knowledge than I would step in here — that the judge tried to hedge: that is, instead of throwing out the conviction altogether as unjust, he tried to modify it which appears to be something that was just not an option. In other words, it seems he didn’t have the authority to essentially retry the case, though he could find that the outcome was so unjust as to need to be tossed out. He didn’t do that. Was that an accidental misunderstanding on his part? Was he trying to play to two sides of the issue? Was he just not brave enough to release Genarlow Wilson outright?
I am willing to bet — though I very sincerely hope I am wrong — that the Attorney General will win this appeal.
What next?
Yeah, I’m very much afraid that you will be proven correct on this one, Elizabeth.
The more I think about this, and the more I read about it, the more I think the judge was trying to play both sides of the issue, hoping to make everyone happy and instead making nobody happy.
Most especially and most importantly, Genarlow Wilson.
By going outside the rules of what he could do with the sentence, he left the door wide open for the idiot in the AG office to appeal. Perhaps he assumed some compassion or sense of fair play or at least some common sense in that office?
If so, he has been miserably disappointed on all counts.
I saw this poor kid’s story on Dateline months ago. He should not be in jail. This case is that simple. These over-zealous prosecutors need to take a xanax and get laid!
Amen brother!
Seems like a lot of problems of this world would be cured by just such a prescription.
[...] Gestapo Visits Genarlow Wilson’s “Victim” The latest details to emerge in the Genarlow Wilson case certainly don’t do much for the image of Georgia’s Attorney General or his conduct in [...]
[...] previously summarized Genarlow Wilson’s situation this way: Genarlow Wilson was 17 and got a blow job from a 15 [...]