And no, I’m not talking about Scooter Libby this time, either. From the AP:
A man sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17 should have to serve out the widely criticized mandatory term, a prosecutor told a judge Wednesday.
A lawyer for Genarlow Wilson, now 21, asked the appellate judge to throw out the aggravated child molestation sentence on the grounds it is grossly disproportionate to the crime. Defense attorney B.J. Bernstein noted that state lawmakers passed a law to close the loophole that led to Wilson’s sentence.
“It gets back to common sense,” Bernstein said. “This very act is only a misdemeanor with no sex offender registration today.”
But prosecutor Paula Smith argued that the new law cannot be applied retroactively.
“The General Assembly did not make it retroactive,” Smith said. “They had the prerogative to do so; they did not.”
So what? General Assemblies, being political bodies, fail to do a lot of things. And a young man (a minor himself at the time) being incarcerated for getting his knob polished by someone two years his junior is simply unconscionable—though even more unconscionable is the prosecutor’s insistence that the draconian sentencing be upheld.
Were a similar “crime” tried today under the previous law, is there any doubt that we’d see jury nullification in action?
That question is rhetorical, as the evidence makes clear:
[…]
Wilson’s sentence has been denounced even by members of the jury that convicted him and the author of the 1995 law that put him behind bars.
“The law was designed to protect kids against really, really bad people doing very bad things,” said the sponsor, former state Rep. Matt Towery, a Republican. “It was never intended to put kids in jail for oral sex.”
Legal textualists—those who look at the wording of the statute while dismissing as irrelevant the “intent” of the legislators who crafted the law—argue that when they read the existing laws “as written” and rule based on the text alone, they are acting in accordance with their mandate as jurists. Which, I think, is correct in some regard—textualists’ readings can often point out badly written law, forcing the legislature to affect changes in the way statutes are crafted—but what they are doing linguistically when they pretend that the law is simply marks on the page to be signified by what they would claim is the clearest, public consensus of the meaning of the accumulated signifiers, is presuming to re-write the law, supplying the signifiers with signifieds through an act of will that, in disregarding the intent of the legislators who ratified the law, doesn’t eschew intent so much as it shifts the locus of the operable intent from the author/ratifiers to the interpreter.
Or, to put it more simply, the judge here has substituted his intention to signify with the already signified (and so intended) signs provided by the legislature. And in doing so, he has swapped originary intent for his own, which he then justifies by pointing to “conventional” meanings.
Which is precisely the kind of thing that gets us into trouble when conventions change—and why it is important to recognize that a meaning is fixed at the time the marks are turned into signs.
Such a formalist/textualist idea about how interpretation works, then, has inherent semiotic flaws. Which doesn’t mean that a judge, independent of a detailed consideration of authorial / legislative intent, can’t arrive at the “correct” interpretation (from the perspective of the speech act, the correct interpretation is the one that most closely tracks with the originary intent); just that, in cases such as these, a failure to consider intent—from a pragmatic standpoint—can end in gross injustice.
Of course, in this case we have the luxury of knowing, from the legislator who crafted the law, that the conviction ran afoul of the law’s intent. Which is unusual—as author’s are rarely around to walk interpreters through the decoding and re-encoding process. And it is for this reason that more attention must be given to crafting laws so that their intent can be easily and uncontroversially understood—and why formalist procedures for interpretation can be dangerous if not tempered with a willingness to appeal to intent in situations where the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime, or where the crime doesn’t seem to fit the spirit of the legislation.
After all, such a discontinuity between what the “words say” and what they are “compelling” you to do is one metatextual signal that perhaps you aren’t properly interpreting the signs.
But this is a detailed discussion for another day; and in fact, I myself praised John Roberts for his ruling in the infamous french fry case—though in that case, there was no clear indication that the legislators hadn’t “allowed” for the reading Roberts reached by virtue of intending the law to be read broadly. Instead, they had simply failed to consider the consequences of such a broadly written law.
And of course, from a pragmatic standpoint, the punishment was largely symbolic—and was intended, one suspects, to chide the legislature for its carelessness in crafting the law.
But back to this case:
In 2003, Wilson was an honors student, standout athlete and homecoming king preparing for his SATs with an eye toward college. At a New Year’s Eve party involving alcohol, marijuana and sex, someone videotaped the girl performing oral sex on Wilson.
[…]
Bernstein compared the case to the recent rape case involving Duke University lacrosse players, saying prosecutors in both cases overreached.
Wilson has served more than 27 months in prison. His case has become something of a cause celebre, largely because of the legal loophole that ensnared him.
[…]
If Wilson had had sexual intercourse with the 15-year-old he would have fallen under Georgia’s “Romeo and Juliet” exception. But under the law in 2003, oral sex between teens constituted aggravated child molestation and carried a mandatory sentence.
Georgia lawmakers changed the law in 2006 to make consensual oral sex between teens a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars. Offenders do not have to register as sex offenders, as Wilson will be required to do.
But the state’s top court ruled the 2006 change couldn’t be applied retroactively to Wilson’s case. An attempt earlier this year to pass a bill that would provide a remedy for Wilson has stalled.
Wilson’s most vocal critic has been Georgia’s top Republican senator, Eric Johnson, of Savannah.
“This was not two star-crossed lovers on a date,” Johnson wrote in an opinion piece opposing the bill written to help Wilson.
The five other male partygoers took plea deals. Wilson’s case was the only one that went to trial.
Wilson’s mother, Juannessa Bennett, said outside the courthouse Wednesday that he has rejected plea deals from prosecutors because he would still need to register as a sex offender.
Regardless of whether it was “two star-crossed lovers on a date” or a couple of kids experimenting, the punishment is needlessly draconian and ethically reprehensible.
And I don’t know about the rest of you, but the last person I’d want presuming to take ownership over the interpretation process is some phony-tough bluenose like Johnson—who either has no scruples, or else is substituting his personal morality for justice.
I applaud Wilson for refusing to take the deal that would forever label him a sex offender. And I think that the legislature should be pressured by the people of Georgia and interested parties from around the US to get its act together and pass a bill rectifying what is clearly a government-sanctioned injustice.
Senator Johnson’s info can be found here, for those interested in calling his office or emailing him.
Which I intend to do right now.
It’s more like Measure for Measure.
But I think that Juannessa’s saying it’s her son who’s rejecting the plea deal.
As ridiculous as the case may be, the judge is not the problem here. The rule that statutes are generally not considered to have retroactive effect unless so specified by the legislature is well-established in every jurisdiction of which I am aware. And the legislators should be aware of that rule. The judge refused to be an activist; it’s up to the elected representatives to change the statute.
I apologize for the idiots who make decisions in my home state.
Karl —
I agree, to a point (see Roberts on the fry case); but at the same time, I’m not sure how the rule of law is damaged when a judge acts as an activist in order to rectify a clear wrong—as expressed by the law’s author—that has resulted in the denial of freedom to a young man.
This is my one concern about conservative justices—an unhealthy respect for precendent, even when the precedent is bad law.
Believe me, I grapple with these problems. But in this case, I’m not sure I can stand by and watch a young man rot in prison because the legislature can’t get its act together, and because a judge refuses to take into account the law’s intent (even as it stood in retrospect).
Jeff, I think you are dead on. We hire judges to determine if the law is being adequately applied, in spirit and in text. While the law may not be justice, rigid adherence to a mistake results in injustice. This case is ridiculous.
I would, however, cut the prosecutor a little slack. She is doing her job. She has to say that b.s Whether she believes that tripe or not, the State hires people to fight these sorts of appeals and she represents the state.
As for activism, this is why appeals to stop “activism” are wrong. What we want from judges is activism, i.e. using their own minds to determine if the application of the law meets society’s reason for passing it. What we don’t want is Sam Alito (my perspective) or John Paul Stevens (most of PW perspective) inserting political bias into these decisions. Be impartial and disinterested, but use your brain to determine what the law indicates the right solution is. Mindlessly following the law is not (pardon the expression) “good judging.” The law serves us; it is not an absolute.
I disagree with you here, Jeff. Where laws and their spacific application are ambiguous, original intent is instructive. Where there is an unintended consequence, the fault and subsequent responsibility for corrective action rest with the legislature, not the courts.
I probably agree with this here. It’s a shame for the young man (a horrible miscarriage of justice-type of shame), but after the initial decision in favor prosecution, most folks’ hands are tied. I don’t remember from the last time this came up, but any ideas on what leeway the judge was allowed?
No, Timmy. Appeals to judicial activism are not wrong. Interpretation that doesn’t take into account intent is.
And yes, I blame the legislature here, Jeffersonian—though, because we know what the intent of the law was, and we have the legislature blocking justice for this young man—I’d like to see something done to stop a known injustice.
The pragmatist in me says we need not be so rigid when we are certain that an injustice is being perpetrated by the state.
I saved my ire for the Senator. But given that all interpretation is intentional—and an interpretation here that privileged original intent would have prevented an injustice—I am bothered by this continued adherence to formalism that many justices assume.
Y’know, if this kid had only waited til he was in his fifties and President of the country and got his knob polished, he could have lied about it, suborned perjury, obstructed justice, etc. and he would have been a hero to millions of liberals.
And feminists.
ESPN the Magazine had a terrific article on this situation a few months back. I’m the last guy in the WORLD to play the race card, but I think this is one situation where if Genarlow was WASPy, the outcome would be markedly different.
Shame on the legislature for closing the door to future occurrences like this, but failing to remedy this injustice.
So…
What kinda time did the knob-gobbler pull, since she was just as guilty of “sex with a minor” as her boyfriend?
According to some local sources, this may in fact be the exact opposite of the case. Some reports have inferred that the reason the Governor and others are leary of getting involved and setting a precedent is that there are as many as a thousand similar cases which would then be open for review. It seems to me that this case maybe getting attention then because the defendant is a black athelete, emphasis on athelete. But it also makes me wonder how similar the other cases are, and if maybe the travesty is much larger than anyone imagines.
Yeah, kyle, without knowing anything about this case, as a Southerner, soon as I started reading Jeff’s post I thought, “this kid’s gotta be black. Or really, really poor white. But probably black.” And whattaya know?
Things are better in the South than they used to be, but if this boy was white and at least lower-middle-class, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. (The change in the South is that if he was black and upper-middle or upper class, we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion, either.)
And mojo’s quite right – the girl’s just as guilty, so what kind of time did she get?
Did the girl get the same charge sense he was underage as well? If not, why not?
Neither should be charged of course but I’m just wondering why it’s a one way street.
B Moe – the ESPNMag article (either that or a different article I read around the same time) referenced a couple similar cases involving well-off white kids in which they were let off scot free.
I agree with you, though, that the problem is very MUCH larger than this one isolated case, this is just the one that has garnered the most publicity
The problem with this is that: (a) legislative intent is really collective, not individual; and (b) legislators and their aides—esp. in Congress—are prone to stick all sorts of mischief in the legislative history, despite the general rules of judicial interpretaion, in hopes of achieving what they could not achieve in the democratic legislative process. That’s why the general rule against retroactivity is not just formalism.
Similarly, I would not have taken the word of the Federalists that the anti-Sedition laws did not violate the first amendment, even if some, like John Adams, were involved in its passage.
Or I could have just written that hard cases make bad law.
a young man (a minor himself at the time) being incarcerated for getting his knob polished by someone two years his junior is simply unconscionable
Why?
Some commenters above are wondering whether the girl was charged, and if not, why not.
I haven’t fully researched it, but the Georgia law seems to address victims under 16 years of age. Thus, it seems likely that the reason is that she was under 16 and he was over 16 at the time.
Because a blowjob between teenagers isn’t a crime that should be punished by hard time, Christopher. It’s senseless. Especially in light of the fact that had he actually put in her vagina instead of her mouth, it would have only been a misdemeanor under the same law.
I dunno. A bunch of upper-class white boys didn’t even get the hummer and faced criminal charges.
Faced, and were cleared of.
Did she swallow? Because if she did, they ought to tack on a couple more years.
Uh, there’s just a tad bit more to the story than that.
[Red Leader]Stay On Target.[/Yeaaagh]
What I wanna know is, who caught the kids and had the boy arrested? And why did this person decide that the boy was abusing the girl? How did he/she know that they didn’t do this on a regular basis and it was just her turn to take the downtown ferry?
Although it’s nice to know that some years of underage are more underage than other years of underage. That should make the pervs happy.
I’m tired of all this legalistic gobbledegoo.
Sorry, I could get in trouble if I let you blow me, so how about I bang you up the ass?
Uh, I’m aware of that, kelly. The point is that none of them are in prison, partly because they had the necessary resources to fight injustice. Durr.
Andrew – one of the girls at the party told her mom that she was raped. All (or most) of the partygoers were rounded up. The Wilson knobgobble was part of the a videotape made by one of the kids.
I think I see the problem.
Then again, did the little filmmaker face charges of child pornography?
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Prosecutors have discretion – it is part of the office. In my view, and experience, it is the hardest part of the job. What she did was a pure, weak-assed cop out. She doesn’t represent the “State”, she represents the People of the State of Georgia. That isn’t an abstraction – it’s supposed to be a direct reminder of who you work for.
In light of the law regarding intercourse, and the current state of the law – this one begs for some flexibility (and I don’t mean that crap about pleading him to something that would let them keep their “registration” scalp either).
If this is truly Paula Smith’s decision to make, she made the wrong one.
Yes, they do, and yes it is.
If the Appeals Court doesn’t get this right, it’s time the Governor did. This is an abomination.
Star-crossed lovers? On a date?
Methings you don’t have all the facts.
Our home boy got his knob polished by a wayard juvenile who had just completed servicing one of his buddies.
All while videotaping the act.
How can you fall for the MSM “star student pro football player candidate just caught up in a bad law” bullshit?
Come on dude. WAKE UP. Haven’t you learned anything about how the media operates? You’ve been hoodwinked by slanted selective reporting by liberals.
This guy was a leacher, preying on a girl gone wild with his buddies. If you insist on defending him, let’s roll the videotape.
I guarantee if you did, you won’t find a single supporter of your argument that our gangsta-wanna-be doesn’t deserve every single day of his sentence.
Let him get his freak on in jail. The NFL has enough problems.
And not for nothing, but if she was 14 instead of 15, would you still feel like he should be let out. What about 13 … 12?
When does it become a crime to you, Jeff?
If she was 14, he’d have been 16. What if she was 6 and he was 8?
10 years in prison?
I know what you mean, bro. Like one time when I was 17 and a walking fucking hard-on I was drunk and watching this wild girl get down on my buddy, she got done with him and turned to me, and my balls were blue as a Neil Young love song, and my dick was so hard a cat couldn’t scratch it, but I shouted NO! Away from me you wayward hussie! Thou shalt not corruptith me!
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
MASHER!!!
If the legislature is “blocking justice,” isn’t that their intent? And how is it that we know the intent? Because of what one of the legislators says now? Now that has interesting implications for lawmaking.
A good point. The legislature has in front of it a real-life example of how their law is being applied and is not acting. It speaks volumes about the legislature’s (as opposed to a legislator’s) intent.
I agree that this is an excessive punishment, but I’m loathe to clamor for judicial relief because of what it means down the road.
This guy was a leacher, preying on a girl gone wild with his buddies. If you insist on defending him, let’s roll the videotape.
First of all from your description, she sounds more lecherous than he does. He didn’t fuck two girls did he?
And if there’s lechery involved then the kids deserve 10 years?
And if it was one on one would have proven that there was no lechery involved?
Your reasoning is just nonsense. We can’t throw people in jail on the basis of reading their minds and deciding that they’re lecherous. No reading minds in court!
Thanks Major John. You got the point out before I could.
The law tries to be as specific as possible and STILL there is enough contextual differences between cases that it takes a good deal of honesty and brainpower for prosecutors to hew to their oaths.
Nifong thoroughly abused his power.
In this situation, however, where is the governor? While the legislature drags things out, why doesn’t the governor pardon the kid? He’s already served over two years, fer crissakes.
Ah, it all makes sense. You can get 10 years in prison if you’re a football player gettin’ yer willie wonka tongue-bathed, because you’re obviously doing it because you wanted to get your rocks off. Anyone else who gets oral sex is expressing his personhood and reaching out into the nameless joy of life where God smiles and sends a shower of daisies and buttercups upon all concerned. I’ll bet Captain America didn’t even cuddle with her afterwards, the jock bastard.
Let’s lock him up and throw away the key! BECAUSE OF THE LECHERY!
Lookit, I’m not excusing Bart Starr, Jr. here. In fact, I think he deserves 5 minutes along with the 15-year-old’s father or nearest male relative, no questions asked. But ten years in prison? Doesn’t seem a good use of our correctional resources to me.
Good grief! I popped in just to make sure you’d not been blown away in the snow storm which BTW surely is just another manifestation of global warming and read about another prosecutorial outrage! Just what I needed–as if the Libby sentencing hadn’t infuriated me sufficiently.
Good for you, Jeff.
Again, there’s an alarming lack of appreciation on a very basic level of what it means to deprive someone of their liberty. To support incarceration in this instance is to devalue the freedom of everyone, everywhere.
Uh, I have enough trouble following your “language deconstructionism” arguments (I don’t even know if I’ve phrased that correctly): Is a person—a judge—who took a strict, literal reading of a statement—a law—now in the same category as those “intentionalist” “interpreters” you’ve been railing against for all these years?
I wouldn’t argue that this was a bad case involving a bad law; but aren’t you here arguing for the very “language deconstruction” you always despise when some public figure “misinterprets” something?
I’m not being a smart-ass; I really am confused: Why does “author’s intent”, and its inherent value, change when “everyone knows” that the “intent” was “clearly” wrong? Isn’t that clarity itself a “deconstruction?”
I’ve returned63 times to this idea, and I’m still confused….
Jeff’s point I think, Challeron, is that surely the legislature didn’t mean to have someone sentenced to prison for getting his head who would have been let go for boinking.
W
John, I beg to differ here. On a different thread we argued discretion (the Libby thread), here Ms. Smith is in front of the Appellate Court, as this kid’s sentence has been challenged. Surely she is neither the AG for the State of Georgia. he doesn’t get to choose which appeals are fought and which ones are ignored (a rare case indeed). Her boss said “some guy is appealing his sentence, here’s the case.”
You know just like I do that the Solicitor General’s office and the Appellate branch of any AG’s office is full of people forced to defend statutes and convictions which they do not like. But, it is a job.
That’s what I meant
Is it true the prosecution had a staff member (tee hee) named Louise Lockjaw??
Dan, I understood the general thrust of Jeff’s post; but I generally come here to learn from Jeff the concepts of language (semiotics? Like I said, I’m still confused), and it certainly looks to me that here Jeff is arguing for the very principle he usually argues against, i.e. that language should never be “deconstructed” into anything other than the author’s original intent.
I’m still not arguing that this isn’t bad legislation—or, indeed, that the judge might have ruled this way in order to point out that it is bad law (I don’t automatically buy into the racism bit)—but in the course of this essay, Jeff ran contrary to his normal position on language interpretation.
And, although I appreciate your attempt to “interpret” what Jeff wrote (hehe), I’d like to hear from Jeff on this apparent conflict of theory.
And, Jeff, I’m not trolling or trying for a “gotcha moment”: I take all of your writings on writing very seriously (I’m trying to be a writer), and I think I’m missing something here.
(And I don’t expect33 different explanations.)
I think, though, that this does go to the matter of intent, because the writers of the law, in this case the legislature, have closed the loophole. It is a matter of technicality, or, you could say in terms of interpretive generosity, a situation where “the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” If someone employs a solecism while speaking to me, and the meaning is clear, but I choose to be an asshole about it, it reflects on me, e.g. “Laurie David, crusader for Global Warming”–is she really crusading for Global Warming?
Or to make another argument that might have more force with some–does this mean that the law, as written, would have constituted a violation of equal protection with respect to underaged gay youth?
Sounds to me like this guy is just stupid. There’s a video tape of the crime, his 5 buddies are ready to testify against him, the prosecutor offers him a deal and he’s stupid enough to ask for a trial? Think of it as evolution in action, I guess.
Because you think that having your goo gobbled by a 15 year old when you’re 17 ought to make you a sex offender?
I think its pretty clear that’s what the law said at the time. My personal opinion: when the police stop me for speeding I don’t refuse to sign the ticket because I was driving safely for the road and traffic conditions.
So perhaps you could explain why its worse to be registered as a sex offender than to risk spending extra years in jail. That’s the choice Wilson faced. Obviously he agreed with you. Which kinda makes you stupid too. Except if you were really faced with the choice would you really take the jury trial knowing you were guilty of a crime and the crime was on videotape?
Well, maybe its society’s fault you and Wilson are stupid. Did you play football in High School, too? I did and I have made plenty of stupid decisions since then. Blame it on football, then. So fuck football. At least until pre-season.
It may be you didn’t understand my point. Genarlow Wilson is not mainly a victim of a miscarriage of justice. He victimized himself by his stupid decision to ask for a jury trial when he knew he was guilty.
Because a blowjob between teenagers isn’t a crime that should be punished by hard time, Christopher. It’s senseless.
Well, I asked why it’s unconscionable, not why you believe it is irrational or senseless. The word was used intentionally, Professor Goldstein is very careful with his language and he used that word on purpose. It means “outside the realms of conscience” or something that offends the sense of morality.
How is it unconscionable for this to happen? What absolute moral law are you appealing to here?
Not “that seems like too much time” not “I did it and I wouldn’t want to face jail.”
And the filming of the act puts it into another category entirely than simply physical activity.
Sex offender status is for life, and it seriously fucks up your life.
He was hoping for a jury nullification on the felony charges, and several members of the jury confirmed he would have gotten it if they had been informed of the mandantory penalties.
Here is Wikipedia on national sex offender registration, and here is the Georgia law, which includes wearing an electronic monitoring system for life, which the perp is responsible for the cost of, and never working with or around children for pay or voluntarily. Right now, the dude is fucked for life.
So the 5 guys who took the deal are also “fucked for life”, right? No, you’re whining because Wilson is in prison and you are not whining about the guys who took the deal. If the law was wrong for Wilson it was wrong for them too. Where’s their appeal? Where’s their publicity? Will you write to the governor to pardon them too?
Maybe that’s why the legistature didn’t make the changes in the law retroactive. Maybe they didn’t want to release every sexual predator charged under the old law. Maybe they didn’t want to get sued by every sexual predator charged under the old law.
It just seems strange to pick as your miscarriage of justice poster boy someone who is not only guilty and has a video tape of the crime but refused a plea bargain to boot. You really couldn’t find anyone in prison who’s actually innocent of a crime?
tw: movement36. That’s a lot of crap.
Am I the only one who giggled at the fact that the defense attorney’s name is “B.J.”?
Okay, it’s just me then.
Have you read this?
Sex criminals don’t deserve more breaks
By ERIC JOHNSON
Published on: 03/27/07
The issue before the Georgia General Assembly today is SB 37. It is not just about Genarlow Wilson; it is about excusing the predators and ignoring the victims.
The bill will allow defense attorneys to petition judges to re-open every case of a convicted sex offender who engaged in sodomy, child molestation, aggravated child molestation, or enticed a child for indecent purposes if the convicted sex offender and the minor victim are less than four years apart. The victims involved could be as young as 13.
I oppose any legislative effort to require the courts to revisit more than 1,100 cases like Wilson’s. These predators violated the law. Police arrested them. District attorneys chose to prosecute them. Juries convicted them. The Legislature should not second-guess the process. We did not listen to the testimony or see the evidence. I hate to think of the emotional burden on thousands of victims, the cost to the taxpayers, and the delay in justice to pending court cases if this bill were to pass.
For example, this bill will allow several of the men who raped and sodomized a 13-year-old mentally challenged Cobb County girl in 2000 to have their sentences reduced to a misdemeanor. Like Wilson, they are serving mandatory 10-year sentences for aggravated child molestation. Like Wilson, those young men also videotaped their activities with a “consenting” minor. But, instead of six men, there were 18 involved in this case. The AJC called it a “gang rape.”
People seem to forget that the minors in these cases are the victims. Wilson is not the victim. The two girls in a hotel room with six stoned adults are the victims in his case.
The 13-year-old Cobb County girl is the victim, not the men who locked her in a room and repeatedly raped her.
If SB 37 passes, hundreds of convicted sexual predators could be turned loose. The danger is real.
One of Wilson’s buddies from the hotel room, while out on bail awaiting trial, impregnated a 12-year-old and since has been convicted of statutory rape.
As these predators have proved, they could strike again and take the innocence of another child.
Here’s some of the rebuttal from your side.
At the end of the day he [Eric Johnson] is not a good leader for Georgia, he is not a good Christian, and he is not a decent human being. However, what do you expect, he is after all, a politician.
I better give up, before I get called some names too.
Oh hell. Go ahead and call me whatever you want. I’ll try not to get too offended.
And another thing (yes, you jerks have really pissed me off.) Romeo and Juliet is not a reasonable characterization of Wilson’s relationship with the goo gobbler. A high school senior who is a standout athlete and homecoming king should be able to do much better for a girlfriend than a sophomore slut who trades blowjobs for attention.
So which do you think is more offensive, “goo gobbler” or “slut”? Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
CT – It’s a blowjob. A 10-year prison sentence for a blowjob between teens DOES offend my sense of morality. You may think the act disgusting, you may agree (for who knows WHAT reason) that it should be criminal, but HOW can you believe it’s worth a decade in jail? Don’t hold your moral compass so close to your refrigerator magnets – it’ll get all screwed up.
klrfz1 – you have no concept of what effect being a registered sex offender has if you think it is a much better route than the jail. you’re marked for life, indelibly. Hardly worth it considering the crime committed.
The issue isn’t what Wilson’s buddies did after the fact. The issue isn’t what other *actual* sex criminal did. The issue isn’t whether Wilson could have done “better” than that girl. The issue is the he is being punished beyond any reasonable measure because of a loophole that is now closed.
Also, as I understand it, Wilson had no role in the taping, CT. So that hardly puts it in another category entirely.
TW – evidence24. heh.
“Because you think that having your goo gobbled by a 15 year old when you’re 17 ought to make you a sex offender?”
No asshat. I don’t think that. The majority of the people think that. So we made a law. If you’re 17, you and your gangsta buddies can’t find some 15-year-old and have an orgy with her while videotaping it for your next You Tube adventure.
Too fucking bad. We know there are folks out there like you who do’t agree with us … that’s why everybody gets a vote. Your side lost.
If you don’t like the law, find 51% of people who agree with your stupid opinion and change the law. Until then, stay away from the kiddies or get ready to star in San Quentin’s Funniest Shower-Room Soap Videos.
And say goodbye to your supposed NFL career.
Fixed that for you, Kyle.
If you want mercy for Wilson, write the Governor for a pardon. He has already received justice.
I have a question for all you pro-Wilson-blowjobbers. Where’s the Juliet? She’s 19 now right? If Wilson is such a good, good man, why isn’t she out front asking for special treatment for him? Has she come forward and I missed it?
I tell you what. I’ll compromise. I’ll sign a petition to ask the Governor to pardon Genarlow Wilson if you all will stop trying to get the rest of the sexual predators in Georgia released. Deal?
A 10-year prison sentence for a blowjob between teens DOES offend my sense of morality.
Based on what? I can see you being outraged, but what moral code declares this as immoral for you? That’s what I’m trying to work out.
Child porn is illegal for a reason – even if the two people (or more) involved really, really like each other. That shouldn’t be just dismissed here.
You guys have no problem with the fact that if he’d just have biffed her, he’d have been let off?
Compare this, if you will, with the sentences given female teacher sexual predators when they induce their students to fuck them. Is it proportional?
Yeah, I’m for mercy in this case, and I’m for mercy in the case of the kid who sells a coupla hits of blotter to some undercover at the Phish concert, and gets put away for 10 years. I’ll tell you what: I got blown when I was in high school. Call the cops. Have me put away as a dangerous element.
You guys have no problem with the fact that if he’d just have biffed her, he’d have been let off?
I don’t think inconsistency really makes anyone happy. I further am opposed to using laws to do what moral teaching, societal pressure, and personal responsibility ought to do instead. I’m just trying to work out what makes people so upset about this and what makes them consider this wrong, not just disagreeable.
What makes this wrong, I think, and I can only speak for myself, is that the punishment is so disproportionate to the offense.
See, this is why I don’t like letting people like timmy and heet hang around. Otherwise sane people start making shit up and arguing with that instead of the topic on the table. They are a bad influence.
And then I posted Eric Johnson’s op ed.
Not, repeat NOT a straw man. I am arguing directly against your and Goldsteins’s rationalizations and pointing out some consequences you so easily ignore.
“I’ll tell you what: I got blown when I was in high school. Call the cops. Have me put away as a dangerous element.”
Dan … the fact that you got some head in high school is dispositive of nothing.
Did you get blown by a legal minor?
Did you get blown by the same girl who just blew five of your buddies in a preplanned orgy?
Did you videotape it?
Did you then force the state to have a trial, at a not insigificant cost, after you were offered a deal
No … so, the fact that you got some head in high school really isn’t the point here, is it?
Here’s the point: 5 adult men finding a 15-year-old who is willing to blow them while videotaping their gangstaorgy are a menace to civilized society.
Boy had chance to plead. He chose to roll the dice, and a jury of his peers, your fellow citizens, said: “Put him away. For a long time.”
If I’m he father of that girl, the safest place for that punk gangsta is in jail. Cuz when they let him out, I’m most likely gonna circumcize him again.
Nope, no strawmen here. Asking for a judicial review of a questionable law is exactly the same as trying to free all the sexual predators in Georgia.
Just out of curiousity, if you found out your 15 year old son performed oral sex on five 17 year old cheerleaders in a row, would you be threatening sexual mutilation of those girls?
Sorry – late to the party with this one. HEY DUMBASS! The jury of his peers did NOT, in fact, say “Put him away. For a long time.†If you’d bother to READ the article, you’d see that several jurors cried when they read the verdict, because they did not know about the 10-year mandatory sentence. In fact, more than one said they would have voted for acquittal had they known. But don’t let the facts get in the way of your holier-than-thou ranting.
You fixed nothing, champ. The girl was a more than willing participant, not a victim of rape or molestation. Again, don’t let the facts get in the way of your slavering. Nice strawman with the Romeo/Juliet diversion too. I know I didn’t/don’t see it from that angle. Maybe somebody else did, and I missed it.
Evidently a judge agrees that the original sentence was ridiculous and unfitting. Direct some of your ignorant spleen at him now, klfarzradejjd.