Big surprise of the day
Posted by Raznor
In Georgia, a 17 year old boy was sentenced to 10 years in prison for consensual oral sex with a 15 year old girl. Here's a picture of the boy from his website:
Wow, what a surprise. Georgia has decided to destroy the life of a young black man. How much you wanna bet the girl was white? How come I looked at this case and in two seconds knew the boy was black?
This kid had no criminal record. He had good grades and was a good athlete. He had consensual sex with a girl 2 years younger than him. And now his life has been utterly destroyed. And why? Because he was black. You never hear of this sort of sentencing in the case of good ol' American whites having good ol' American heterosexual sex. But once you've offended the delicate sensibilities of the southern racists, you're screwed.
Bob Dylan said it best:
How sad that that's still as true today as when it was written.
You can sign a petition here.
Update: Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money has more. The girl was in fact also black. The prosecutor was white. And, as zuzu points out, the jury didn't realize, when finding Wilson guilty, that the law held a minimum of 11 years in prison, 10 without parole. Also, zuzu points to why Wilson didn't take a plea bargain:
In Georgia, a 17 year old boy was sentenced to 10 years in prison for consensual oral sex with a 15 year old girl. Here's a picture of the boy from his website:
Wow, what a surprise. Georgia has decided to destroy the life of a young black man. How much you wanna bet the girl was white? How come I looked at this case and in two seconds knew the boy was black?
This kid had no criminal record. He had good grades and was a good athlete. He had consensual sex with a girl 2 years younger than him. And now his life has been utterly destroyed. And why? Because he was black. You never hear of this sort of sentencing in the case of good ol' American whites having good ol' American heterosexual sex. But once you've offended the delicate sensibilities of the southern racists, you're screwed.
Bob Dylan said it best:
If you're black you might as well not show up on the street
Less you wanna draw the heat.
How sad that that's still as true today as when it was written.
You can sign a petition here.
Update: Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money has more. The girl was in fact also black. The prosecutor was white. And, as zuzu points out, the jury didn't realize, when finding Wilson guilty, that the law held a minimum of 11 years in prison, 10 without parole. Also, zuzu points to why Wilson didn't take a plea bargain:
The prosecutor, David McDade, the district attorney in Douglas County, west of Atlanta, says he has repeatedly offered Mr. Wilson the opportunity to resolve the case with a plea deal, adding that he would have to be treated similarly to the other defendants in the case, who are serving five- to seven-year prison sentences with a chance at parole. They, too, will have to register as sex offenders.
Mr. Wilson is adamant that he will not plead.
“Even after serving time in prison, I would have to register as a sex offender wherever I lived and if I applied for a job for the rest of my life, all for participating in a consensual sex act with a girl just two years younger than me,” he told a reporter for Atlanta magazine last year, adding that he would not even be able to move back in with his mother because he has an 8-year-old sister. “It’s a lifelong sentence in itself. I am not a child molester.”
2 Comments:
Presumably, the sex act in question here was fellatio. In that case, it's interesting to me that, technically, it's not Wilson who actually committed said "crime". All he is really guilty of is ejaculating. 10 years seems a bit of a steep price to pay for blowing one's wad.
And the thing is, at the time, had he had vaginal sex with the 15 year old, it would have carried a maximal sentence of a year. In reaction to this case, the Georgia legislature changed the law so that fellatio would also fall under the "Romeo and Juliet" exemption, but they very specifically made it not retroactive.
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