[Posted Oct. 31, 2007]

Georgia Court Overturns 10-Year
Sentence In Teen Oral Sex Case

     Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote the majority opinion in the state’s high court’s decision October 26 that freed a young man who was sentenced to 10 years for teenage consensual sex.

Genarlow Wilson and his mother standing outside jail walls.

      Now 22-years-old, Genarlow Wilson, an African American, was 17 when he received oral sex from a 15-year-old White girl during a 2003 New Year’s Eve party. Wilson was prosecuted and convicted in 2005 of aggravated child molestation and sentenced to 10 years.
      The Georgia Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling ordered the immediate release of Wilson whose case had drawn denunciations from civil rights organizations and human rights advocates, including former President Jimmy Carter. 
      In 2005, Wilson was prosecuted and convicted of aggravated child molestation because he was 17 when the incident occurred. He was given a mandatory 10-year sentence even though the sex act was entirely voluntary and the author of the original law said he never intended it to be used to prosecute teenagers for having sex.

      Chief Justice Sears wrote in the majority opinion that the changes in the law "represent a seismic shift in the legislature's view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants."
      Sears, an African American, said the severe punishment makes "no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment" and that Wilson's crime did not rise to the "level of adults who prey on children."
      The case became even more controversial this past June when a Monroe County judge threw out Wilson’s sentence declaring it “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution. But then in a surprise move Georgia’s conservative African American Attorney General Thurbert Baker appealed the lower court ruling.
      The appeal had the effect of keeping Wilson in prison where he had languished since 2005. In its 4-to-3 ruling the Georgia Supreme Court agreed with the lower court decision saying the 10-year mandatory sentence was “grossly disproportionate” to the alleged crime. 

 (Taylor Media Services contributed to this story.)

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