Monday, June 11, 2007

Good news, maybe:

A Georgia judge ordered the release Monday of a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. The state attorney general, however, said he would appeal.

The judge in his ruling Monday threw out Genarlow Wilson's 10-year sentence and amended it to misdemeanor aggravated child molestation with a 12-month term, plus credit for time served.

Under the ruling, Wilson, who has been behind bars for more than two years, would be released and would not be required to register as a sex offender....

Wilson's original sentence, for aggravated child molestation, was widely criticized on the grounds it was grossly disproportionate to the crime. State lawmakers later passed a law to close the loophole that led to the 10-year term.

...A jury had found Wilson, an honor student, guilty in 2005 of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl during a 2003 New Year's Eve party....


Will the state AG let it drop? I hope so, because this wasn't right:

...at the time of Mr. Wilson’s offense, a so-called "Romeo and Juliet" exception had already been made for sexual intercourse between teenagers.

"Had Genarlow had intercourse with this girl, had he gotten her pregnant, he could only have been charged with a misdemeanor and punished up to 12 months," said Brenda Joy Bernstein, Mr. Wilson’s lawyer.

...The prosecutor, David McDade, the district attorney in Douglas County, west of Atlanta, says he has repeatedly offered Mr. Wilson the opportunity to resolve the case with a plea deal...

..."Even after serving time in prison, I would have to register as a sex offender wherever I lived and if I applied for a job for the rest of my life, all for participating in a consensual sex act with a girl just two years younger than me," he told a reporter for Atlanta magazine last year, adding that he would not even be able to move back in with his mother because he has an 8-year-old sister....


Just let him go.

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