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Sentence 'Cruel,' Georgia Court Rules

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By RICHARD FAUSSET and JENNY JARVIE, Los Angeles Times

Published: October 27, 2007

FORSYTH, Ga. - A young black man imprisoned for having consensual oral sex with a teenage girl, who became an example of unequal justice for many, was released Friday after his conviction was overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court.

'I'm finally happy to see we've got justice,' Genarlow Wilson, 21, said outside the prison. 'It's just a whole new beginning. I got fresh breath, a new life.'

Wilson was joined by his 9-year-old sister, Jaia; his attorney, B.J. Bernstein, and his mother, Juanessa Bennett.

He said he planned to attend college and pursue a degree in sociology.

'I know he learned a lot of lessons,' his mother said. 'A lot of people gained from this. It won't happen to another teenager.'

In 2005, Wilson was convicted of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

He was sentenced to 10 years with no possibility of parole, the mandatory minimum under Georgia law at the time.

But the state's Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, found that the sentence amounted to 'cruel and unusual punishment.'

And Friday afternoon, Wilson, a former high school honor student and football star, walked free from Al Burruss Correctional Training Center after 32 months behind bars.

Like the recent case of six black youths charged in a beating incident in Jena, La., Wilson's ordeal became a celebrated cause for civil-rights activists and others who say local justice systems discriminate against people of color.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference President Charles Steele said that Wilson 'most definitely' received unfair treatment because he is black.

'There are many, many more Genarlow Wilson cases before us in society throughout this country,' Steele said.

Wilson's sex act was caught on video at an alcohol-fueled New Year's Eve party in 2003.

His conviction carried a mandatory minimum prison term so harsh it shocked his jury and prompted an international outcry from critics who asserted that prosecutors had been overzealous and racially motivated.

The law, critics said, was meant to keep child molesters behind bars, not to curb teen sex. The jury was not told of the mandatory sentence before it issued its verdict.

The year after Wilson was sentenced, the Georgia General Assembly changed the law to make consensual sex between teenagers a misdemeanor punishable by no more than a year in prison.

Wilson's case also highlighted the increasingly strict sex-offender laws that have become common in Georgia and other states.

If his conviction had been upheld, Wilson would have had to register as a sex offender upon his release.
Georgia law would have prevented him from living or loitering within 1,000 feet of schools, day care centers, parks, churches, swimming pools or school bus stops.

Bernstein said teenagers and parents are often unaware that sex laws vary.

'This is an awakening of parents everywhere. Have a conversation with your teenager,' she said. 'Dangerous sex predators are out there. Those are the people who should be subjected to harsh laws, not Genarlow Wilson.'

The Georgia Supreme Court technically upheld an earlier decision by a lower Georgia court that found Wilson's prison sentence was cruel and unusual, and illegal under the state and federal constitutions.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears said that the Georgia legislature's rewriting of the law to make conduct such as Wilson's a misdemeanor represented a 'seismic shift in the legislature's view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing participants.'

She added that Wilson's crime 'does not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children and that, for the law to punish Wilson as it would an adult, with the extraordinarily harsh punishment of 10 years in prison without the possibility of probation or parole, appears to be grossly disproportionate to his crime.'

In the dissenting opinion, Justice George Carley said that the legislature clearly stated that its 2006 alteration of the law was not to be applied retroactively.

Although some activists have alleged that racism played a part in the case, Douglas County District Attorney David McDade has pointed out that the alleged victim was black.

In June, he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that if he had not pursued the case, 'I would have justifiably been accused of putting a deaf ear to African-American victims.'

A diverse group of supporters, including a conservative talk show host and a prominent New York hedge fund manager who pledged $1 million for bail, had called for Wilson's release.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., called the case 'one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Georgia in modern times.'

'Each day this young man spent in jail is one day too long,' Lewis said. 'It was unbelievable for this young man to go through what he went through.'

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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