In a move long overdue, the Georgia Supreme Court decided last Friday that the 10-year jail sentence handed down to Genarlow Wilson in 2006 constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Wilson, who was imprisoned for almost three years for receiving oral sex from a 15-year-old girl when he was 17, was released later that day.
Wilson broke a Georgia child molestation law since he had oral sex with someone who was a minor. It does not matter that said activity was consensual, or that Wilson was also a minor: He broke the law and got a 10-year jail sentence for it. Cruel and unusual? Definitely. The Georgia legislature has since changed the penalty to a one-year jail sentence, a change made in large part due to the attention the Wilson case attracted.
But the sentence isn’t the problem here — the law itself is terrible and should be abolished.
Any law that says consensual sexual activity between two people is a crime is a violation of privacy and does not belong on the books. I’m trying to figure out how the girl who performed oral sex on Wilson made herself a “victim,” even though she acted freely and consciously. Yet Wilson’s detractors repeatedly pointed out how she was taken advantage of, and even incorrectly referred to Wilson as a rapist.
According to statistics, an inconceivable number of Georgia high schoolers should have already been jailed. Sexual activity between consenting minors happens all the time, and it should not be a crime. The prudish adults who sit under the gold dome of the Georgia State Capitol may think that by making such an act a crime, they are preventing sexual activity from taking place but to believe so reeks of naiveté.
Georgia legislators need to stay away from meddling in morality. That’s not their job, and it takes focus away from more important issues.
Many have speculated that the reason this particular case was tried had to do with Wilson’s race. Wilson’s conviction, they said, was indicative of the subtle racism that still permeates Georgia.
But there was no reason to convict in this case, since Wilson’s crime had no victim. The girl has admitted that the oral sex was consensual so she cannot be the victim. While making a videotape of the act being performed was a foolish mistake, there’s no denying that this exact situation happens all the time — yet Wilson was the only one prosecuted.
Thankfully, justice finally prevailed for Wilson. B.J. Bernstein, his lawyer and a 1984 Emory
College graduate deserves praise for taking on this case pro-bono and for fighting to make sure justice would be carried out. Now it’s time for the next step: The law must be changed so teenagers cannot be charged for child molestation for consensual sexual activities.
Genarlow Wilson was an upstanding student, star football player, and by all accounts a person destined for success. An asinine law took several years of his life from him. Now he’s a free man and wants to go to college and succeed in life. Let’s root for Genarlow Wilson to show he can overcome how the state of Georgia wronged him.
Benjamin Van der Horst is a College junior from Cincinnati. He is executive director of the nonpartisan political organization CSAmerica and the managing editor of the Emory Political Review.
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