Genarlow Wilson Needs Your Help

If you aren’t familiar with the name, check out my piece at BET.com, under “news.” The long way to find the piece is to use this link:

http://www.bet.com/NR/exeres/4927A8FA-C78B-4A7F-BA42-580C489DAD91.htm?

Wilson behaved rather irresponsibly when he was 17 and, at a raucous party in 2003, had oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. No one – not even the girl’s mother – denies that the sex was consensual. But under a law then in effect in Georgia, Wilson was charged with child molestation and was ultimately sentenced to a mandatory 10-year prison term in 2005. If he did the same thing today, the maximum sentence he would face is a year in jail. Even though the law changed last year, it does not cover him.

Of course, something CAN be done about that if enough people pressure the right people. These include:

Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker, Office of the Attorney General, 40 Capitol Square SW, Atlanta, Ga. 30334. Phone: 404-656-3300. Fax: 404-657-8733.   

Douglas County District Attorney David McDade
dmcdade@co.douglas.ga.us
Phone: 770-920-7292
  
According to the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, various officials say they are afraid that freeing Wilson – though it’s the right thing in his case – would “open the floodgates” and lead to chaos in the criminal justice system because other sex offenders would demand reconsideration of their cases. But, Warnock notes, of the roughly 1,300 sex offenders behind bars in Georgia, only seven involve people who were minors when prosecuted and not all of those seven were involved in consensual sexual acts.

“It just boils down to basic politics,” Warnock said of the officials hiding behind the old law and passing the buck – while Wilson remains in prison with an uncertain future.