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This is from last weekend's Atlanta-Journal Constitution. Find out more about Genarlow Wilson by following the link on the sidebar under Struggles to Watch.

Wilson closer to fateful ruling
In teen-sex case, state's high court must see 10 years in prison is cruel, unusual

Published on: 09/02/07 at the AJC

During the Georgia Supreme Court hearing on the Genarlow Wilson case, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears asked a pertinent question:

"Where is the justice?"

Georgians may soon learn the answer to that question. The high court is expected to rule this month on whether Wilson's 10-year sentence for oral sex with a willing younger teen constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Wilson was convicted of engaging in oral sex with a classmate at a wild 2003 New Year's Eve party in Douglasville; he was 17, the girl was 15. That age difference allowed prosecutors to charge Wilson with aggravated child molestation, which by a temporary quirk in Georgia law at the time carried a mandatory 10-year sentence that cannot be commuted by the parole board or the governor.

A year after Wilson's conviction in 2005, the Legislature changed the rules for sex acts between consenting teens by passing what's known as the "Romeo and Juliet" provision. Under that law, an act of oral sex between Wilson and the younger teen would be a misdemeanor punishable by no more than 12 months in jail. However, lawmakers didn't apply the change retroactively.

The case has since become an international blot on Georgia's legal system. Reputations have been sullied, communities divided and a young man locked behind bars for two-and-a-half years so far.

No one believes that Wilson, now 21, belongs in prison any longer, even the prosecutors in Douglas County who put him there. Their initial objective had been to convict Wilson on a rape charge for an act of sexual intercourse with another girl at the party, a 17-year-old who later contended that she had been too inebriated to consent to sex.

Jurors, however, exonerated Wilson of that charge. But given the facts of the case and the wording of state law at the time, they felt compelled to convict him on the charge of aggravated child molestation because of the age difference of the two teens.

Wilson has been offered a plea bargain that would release him from jail, an offer that still stands. However, he has rejected that option because under state law he would still be categorized as a sex offender, with serious consequences for his future.

As a result, Wilson sits in the Burruss Correctional Training Center in Monroe County and waits for the Supreme Court's verdict. A lower court has already ruled in his favor, concluding that a mandatory 10-year term constituted cruel and unusual punishment for a relatively minor crime.

"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," Monroe County Superior Court Thomas Wilson ruled.

The case could have ended there, but Attorney General Thurbert Baker chose to appeal the judge's ruling to the Supreme Court. At a hearing in July, some justices seemed to be struggling with how to reconcile existing case law — which says 10 years is not a shocking sentence for such a crime — with their clear discomfort over Wilson's fate.

"Today, that crime is a misdemeanor," said Sears, asking again, "Where is the justice?"

"That is not for the habeas court to determine," responded Senior Assistant Attorney General Paula K. Smith. She argued that Wilson was convicted under the old law and must suffer the punishment in effect then, regardless of the Legislature's subsequent downgrading of the punishment.

The state's contention that the court has no choice but to uphold the previous law struck another justice as unreasonable.

"Should we do that at the expense of fundamental fairness?" asked Justice Robert Benham.

The answer, Your Honor, is that you must not.

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)