Fairness

The story of Genarlow Wilson has been told thousands of times in the media recently. They always tell the moralistic point of view, but very rarely do you get to hear the facts (especially not on TV when they only have 20 seconds to tell a four year old saga).

Genarlow Wilson and four friends rented a hotel room to celebrate New Year's Eve 2003. They were all 17 years old. Two girls attended this "party" and they basically got gang banged. The 17 year old girl was too drunk to have consented to blowing one guy while Genarlow was fucking her from behind. The fact she was using her own hand to support her as this was going on, demostrated her willingness as a participant. But she probably was also to drunk to say no. She was definitely too drunk to remember because in the morning when she woke up wearing nothing but her socks, she called her mom to say she had been raped. Her mom called the police who showed up at the hotel room and questioned everybody. Genarlow had left the night before in order to make curfew.



So how did police find him? He was on the tape. The tape? That's right, they recorded the whole thing. The also saw a girl who they found out be to only 15 years old (too young to consent). She blew one guy, and when she finished him off, she started sucking Genarlow's dick.

So the little angel everyone is making a big deal about participated in and videotaped a gang bang with one girl too drunk to consent and another too young to consent. In the intervening years the younger girl said it was a consensual act, in fact, she claims to have initiated it, though I don't necessarily believe her or trust her recollection. Just so we have that straight, Genarlow Wilson is no angel.

But everything that happened to him since then was due to stupidity and general unfairness in the state of Georgia.

All five guys involved were offered plea deals. Four of them took the deal and went to prison, one for as much as five years. Most of them are out on parole already. Genarlow refused, he said it was based on principle and the fact that he would have been required to register as a sex offender, which would have prevented him from living in the same house as his little sister. Maybe he refused to accept guilt.

After that, he got railroaded. He was cleared of the charge of raping the 17-year old girl. But the jury found him guilty of aggravated child molestation on the 15-year old. They had to, it was on tape. The girl was only 2 years younger than him though and she admited to willingly blowing him after she willing sucked off someone else. He was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 10 years, even though some jurors say they didn't know that was the mandatory penalty.

Georgia law stipulated that it was "a misdemeanor for teenagers less than three years apart to have sexual intercourse," but a felony for them to have oral sex. This is designed to keep gay teenagers from blowing each other.

Everyone knows that ten years for this crime is too much. Everyone, including the Georgia legislature, they even changed the law. If the same thing happened now it would be a misdemeanor consensual sex between teenagers, with 12 months in prison and no sex offender registry. But they declined it to make it retroactive, probably not just to spite Wilson, although that's how the media is spinning it. They probably had a lot of other people in jail who would have been freed also.

The other thing about the child molestation laws, they are not designed to protect schoolmates from each other. While an 18 year old senior can definitely take advantage of a 14 year old freshman too young to know any better, these laws were enacted to prevent sex between adults and children. Another factor that was never considered.



This week, a judge voided Wilson's sentence, essentially freeing him based on time served. But Georgia's attorney general filed an appeal to keep Wilson in jail. This is the part that really kills me. Why fight to protect a law that no longer exists? Genarlow Wilson has been punished enough.

Let him go, but remember what he did, I know he always will.

Note: I left out the racial aspects of this case because it was unclear to me whether white people were against him because he was black or black people were for him because he is black, like OJ. Also, the attorney general responsible for this latest insult is black too. Additionally, despite what you might read on the internet, everyone in the hotel room that night is black, all five guys and the two girls.