Justice demands opening cell door

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published June 14, 2007

Even Georgia legislators say they never intended to turn sex between consenting teenagers into a felony, but prison remains the home of Genarlow Wilson. His case cries out for mercy, and his fate illustrates the dangers of treating all sex involving minors as though it is predatory.

Wilson, who was 17 at the time a 15-year-old girl performed oral sex on him at a New Year's Eve party, need not be regarded as an angel to appreciate the implications of his imprisonment. Alcohol and marijuana flowed at the party, and sex was traded so openly that much of it was videotaped. But Wilson did have no criminal record, a 3.2 grade point average at his high school and a chance for a football scholarship to attend college. He refused a plea deal in large part because he couldn't accept being labeled a sexual predator.

How is it, then, that Wilson is in his 29th month of serving a 10-year prison sentence? How is it that the Georgia attorney general could demand he remain imprisoned even after a circuit judge finally saw fit to give Wilson a break?

"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, " Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson (no relation) wrote Monday. "If any case fits into the definitive limits of a miscarriage of justice, surely this case does."

The judge ordered that Wilson's sentence be reduced to 12 months and that he be released in recognition of his time already served. But the attorney general is fighting the release, claiming concern about the broader implications of the manner in which the judge reversed the sentence. Does it not matter that releasing Wilson is consistent with the law and in the interest of justice?

What makes the case all the more absurd is that a "Romeo and Juliet" provision in the law was intended to treat consensual acts between two teenagers as no more than a misdemeanor. But the provision only mentioned sexual intercourse, not oral sex. So if Wilson had had intercourse, he would have escaped prison.

The law cannot allow minors to be subjected to any forcible or coercive act of sex. But the Genarlow Wilson conviction is a reminder that laws banning sex with a minor are not so easily applied when the act is consensual and the other participant is a teenager as well. Wilson is in no criminal sense a sexual predator, yet Georgia keeps him locked away as though he is.

[Last modified June 13, 2007, 22:10:24]