With the real specter of WWIII if the neocons throw one last parting wrench into the works of sane global governing by bombing Iran, the small victory today of Genarlow Wilson is welcome news.
Genarlow Wilson, I hope you remember, was the seventeen-year-old Georgia high school homecoming king and 3.2 G.P.A. student, sentenced to ten years for receiving consensual oral sex from a fifteen-year-old back in 2005. Finally this June the Soviet-styled sentencing was overturned after the state of Georgia had already wasted two years of this young man's life. It seemed that the Kafkaesque nightmare was over and this young black Georgian could finally get on with his life.
Yet moments later Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, the highest ranking black elected official in the state, faxed the celebrating family of young Mr. Wilson that he was appealing the verdict.
As Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson stated in his decision to free Genarlow Wilson, "If this court or any court cannot recognize the injustice of what has occurred here, then our court system has lost sight of the goal our judicial system has always strived to accomplish....If any case fits into the definitive limits of a miscarriage of justice, surely this case does."
Today the Georgia Supreme Court agreed with Judge Wilson.
"Although society has a significant interest in protecting children from premature sexual activity, we must acknowledge that Wilson's crime does not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children ..." Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears is quoted as saying in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In a statement emailed to me today from Attorney General Baker's office he writes: "I have received and reviewed the decision by the Georgia Supreme Court in this matter, and I respectfully acknowledge the Court's authority to grant the relief that they have crafted in this case."
That's all fine but he goes on to write:
"As the Supreme Court found, the habeas court's order re-sentencing Mr. Wilson, however well-meaning, was unauthorized under Georgia law. It was for this reason that I appealed, in order to insure a fair and consistent application of the law not just to Mr. Wilson, but to others similarly situated."
Mr. Baker, even in defeat, still hides behind a rigid and robotic interpretation of the law, still failing to understand that in his literalist interpretation of the law, justice was not served.
Yes, there is the law written in books but if there were no such thing as prosecutorial discretion then there would be no need for attorneys and judges. A computer could compile the facts and dispense what it calculated was "justice."
When you are dealing with human beings, especially with young humans whose freedom has been snatched from them, then a compassionate society must do better than merely dispensing vital decisions about their future out of a vending machine.