The Georgia teen sentenced to a decade behind bars for a consensual sex act with a girl two years younger, is finally freed after the Georgia Supreme Court on Friday ruled that his sentence was grossly unfair, constituting cruel and unusual punishment. Thank God. This case was an embarrassment to the State of Georgia, and to the country. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
case, which sparked protest marches and demonstrations in Douglasville, where Wilson was prosecuted. Douglas County prosecutors, meanwhile, have vehemently denied race played a role, noting all the defendants and victims in the case are black.
The case stems from a drug- and alcohol-fueled New Year's Eve party Wilson attended at a Douglasville hotel in 2003. Wilson was charged with raping a 17-year-old girl at the party, but was acquitted. He was ultimately found guilty of felony aggravated child molestation for receiving oral sex from the 15-year-old girl, a crime that carried a minimum 10-year prison sentence under state law at the time.
Four other male youths at the party pleaded guilty to child molestation of the 15-year-old and sexual battery of the 17-year-old. A fifth pleaded guilty to false imprisonment. Their party was captured on a profanity-laden and sexually graphic video filmed by one of the male youths.
Since Wilson's conviction, the former Republican state lawmaker who authored the state Child Protection Act in 1995 has repeatedly insisted it was never his intent to lock up teenagers involved in consensual sex acts. Last year, the Legislature changed the law to make similar acts a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 12 months in prison.
The Supreme Court noted that legal change in the 48-page opinion it issued in Wilson's case Friday morning: "For the law to punish Wilson as it would an adult, with the extraordinarily harsh punishment of ten years in prison without the possibility of probation or parole, appears to be grossly disproportionate to his crime," wrote Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, who sided with the majority in the court's 4-3 decision in favor of freeing Wilson.
In ruling Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the June 11 decision of Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson, who ordered Wilson freed from prison. Judge Wilson, no relation to Genarlow Wilson, also ordered his felony conviction reduced to a misdemeanor. But the Supreme Court said the judge erred in resentencing Wilson "for a misdemeanor crime that didn't exist when the conduct in question occurred." The court said Judge Wilson should instead set aside Wilson's sentence altogether. Judge Wilson did not respond to a message left at his office Friday.
Veda Cannon, the mother of the 15-year-old girl in Wilson's case, declined to comment. But in an interview in June, Cannon said Wilson should never have been criminally charged and imprisoned for receiving oral sex from her daughter. Cannon said the sex between her daughter, Wilson and the four other teens was consensual and regrets she didn't ask prosecutors not to charge them. Critics have pointed out, however, that the age of consent in Georgia is 16.
Good news for Genarlow and his family, but as the AJC points out in an article today, the Georgia legislature still has some work to do:
because he felt that he'd never be free if he were on the sex offender registry. "I just don't feel I'm a sexual predator," he said.
Those sweeping limits have stranded other young offenders with virtually no place to go. Also convicted at age 17 of having oral sex with a 15 -year-old, Jeffery York, 23, of Polk County has resorted to sleeping in a camper van in the woods to comply with the registry. When she was 17, Wendy Whitaker, 28, of Harlem had oral sex with a teen about to turn 16; her sodomy conviction landed her on the registry and forced her and her husband to move twice already.
Now that the Supreme Court has issued a common-sense ruling that sex between teens is not the equivalent of adults preying on children, it's the Legislature's turn to act on reason. Lawmakers must amend the sex offender registry law so that it distinguishes between two immature high school kids hooking up at a party to a pedophile molesting the toddler next door.
Teens convicted of consensual sex acts are not a risk to society, a fact that the General Assembly conceded when it changed the law under which Wilson went to prison. In February 2005, a Douglas County jury convicted Wilson of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with a classmate about two years younger than him. The conviction hinged on one fact: the two-year age gap.
The gap allowed prosecutors to charge Wilson with aggravated child molestation, which, by a strange twist in Georgia law, carried a mandatory minimum 10-year sentence that could not be commuted by the parole board or the governor.
A year after Wilson's conviction, the Legislature admitted the unfairness of criminalizing sexual behavior between two consenting high school students and rewrote the law so that similar behavior is now a misdemeanor, punishable by no more than 12 months in jail. Yet, the Legislature did nothing to help the teens tripped up by the old law.
The latest outrage in the sorry saga of Martin Lee Anderson's brief life and tragic death involves rumors, innuendo, and a quick tempered judge...
PANAMA CITY -- The judge kicked the victim's father out of the courtroom. The mother ran out, too upset to listen to testimony. And one defendant had to be hospitalized for stress.
Much of the drama that unfolded Wednesday in the boot camp case happened outside Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet's courtroom.
By the end of the day, neither of Martin Lee Anderson's parents was in court, and neither was defendant Joseph Walsh II.
The dead teen's mother, Gina Jones, broke down during testimony by one of the accused guards. Jones usually leaves the courtroom whenever the grainy boot camp videotape is aired. Wednesday morning she remained in her seat.
But as accused guard Charles Enfinger described physically restraining the boy -- with the boot camp video playing for jurors -- Jones ran from the room. She cried: "I can't do this!"
About two hours later, just before lunch, the judge removed the teen's father from court after accusing Robert Anderson of "making noises."
Just before lunch, defense attorney Waylon Graham complained to the judge that Anderson and several others sitting in the second row behind the prosecutors were using profanity and commenting on the evidence. It has been a pattern since the accused guards began to testify Tuesday, he said.
"We have complained and complained about it," Graham said.
This time, an investigator for the prosecutors heard it, backing up the defense attorneys' complaints, Graham said.
With the jury outside the courtroom, the judge ordered several people to stand and leave. He told them not to return to court.
Whether Mr. Anderson was talking or not is a matter of dispute:
Reporters sitting in the back of the courtroom didn't hear anything, and neither did Bettye Rouse, a courtroom spectator who was sitting right behind Anderson. She said the family had been quiet.
"I was sitting in the row behind them," she said. "I did not hear a thing."
Crump said he heard that a text message had been sent from someone in the courtroom to Graham, a message accusing Anderson of misbehaving. That's when Graham interrupted the proceedings, Crump said. ...
And Mr. Graham has an interesting take on Anderson's future:
He said the father might be able to get back into the courtroom to hear closing arguments and the verdict if he would "beg forgiveness."
"If they were in federal court, they would all be in a holding cell right now," Graham said.
And then, there's the high drama surrounding one of the defendants:
All seemed quiet until the afternoon break, when two ambulances rolled up to the back of the courthouse. Emergency crews then slipped into the courtroom and carried out Walsh on a stretcher. He wasn't moving. His eyes were closed.
His parents, who have attended much of the trial, were at his side.
Walsh, 37, was taken to Bay Medical Center, the same local hospital where Martin Lee Anderson went after he left the boot camp yard.
Walsh's father, also named Joseph Walsh, said his son was under tremendous pressure.
"Stress does this to him," said Walsh, 62, adding that his son suffers from Gulf War syndrome.
By the end of the day, there were no updates on Walsh's condition. He did not return.
...and last but not least, the obligatory O.J. connection:
All things lead to O.J. Simpson, including the boot camp trial. Absent in the glare of Court TV cameras is the wife of Bay County Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet. She made the cover of Playboy magazine in October 1994. Call her a model. Call her an actress. Simpson called her an alibi after the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Overstreet's wife? Paula Barbieri, Simpson's ex-girlfriend.
An attorney for the defense says the paramilitary atmosphere surrounding the beating of Martin Anderson at a Bay County, Florida boot camp last January was "just another day at the office." Said defense attorney Walter Smith:
The guards saw Anderson not as a 14-year-old child, but as ''a six-foot, 168-pound adult felon,'' Smith said. He had been sent to the camp for a probation violation after trespassing at a school and stealing his grandmother's car from a church parking lot.
Smith, who represents guard Charles Enfinger, said Anderson's file had been marked with a red dot -- the highest of three levels of offenders -- indicating the he had the potential for violence.
''These are not rogue officers who are trying to punish a kid,'' he said. ``Nobody is going to say that those hammer strikes or knee strikes were unlawful, they were strictly according to procedure.''
Defense attorneys maintain that Anderson's death was unavoidable because he had undiagnosed sickle cell trait, a genetic blood disorder. The usually benign disorder can cause blood cells to shrivel into a sickle shape and limit their ability to carry oxygen under physical stress.
Earlier Monday, prosecutors rested their case after the chief medical director for Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice testified that nurse Kristin Schmidt, who stood by during the altercation, did not tell her supervisors that the teen was struck and forced to inhale ammonia.
Smith said later that camp employees did not consider ammonia tablets as a use of force against the offenders, so they did not find it necessary to put that in their reports.
The trial is pretty much going according to rote -- the use of force was "justified" because of Anderson's size (he had no criminal record and had only been there one day, so i'm not sure how they determined that he was a threat), the tape magnifies the horror but it's "misleading", it was sickle cell trait that killed Anderosn, not the brutal half-hour beating by seven adult men, and the conflicting autopsies constitute reasonable doubt. Throw in an all-white jury in Jena-esque Bay County and you've got a recipe for acquittal.
