Court Voids 10-Year Sentence in Teen Sex Case
In a 4-3 decision, Georgia's Supreme Court ordered the release of 21-year-old Genarlow Wilson, whose case drew national attention after he was sentenced to 10 years for engaging in oral sex with a consenting 15-year-old girl when he was a 17-year-old high school student.
In a 4-3 decision, Georgia’s Supreme Court ordered the release of 21-year-old Genarlow Wilson, whose case drew national attention after he was sentenced to 10 years for engaging in oral sex with a consenting 15-year-old girl when he was a 17-year-old high school student.
Your support matters…CNN:
Friday’s decision came after a protracted legal battle that has galvanized international attention and drawn the involvement of civil rights leaders. Partly as a result of Wilson’s conviction, state legislators changed the law to make such consensual conduct between minors a misdemeanor, rather than a felony.
“The release of Genarlow Wilson by the Georgia Supreme Court is a significant victory in redressing the reckless and biased behavior of the criminal justice system that now operates in many states across the union,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said.
“The bad news is that his young life was so unfairly interrupted with time that no state court can recover for him,” Sharpton added. “This is why the Justice Department and federal government must review state courts that willfully and almost without pause violate the civil rights of people, particularly young black men around this country.”
Wilson was an honor student, a football star and his high school’s homecoming king before his conviction.
Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
The MSNBC host reminds the president that the Queen of Soul "took orders from nobody but God."
A new generation of young black radicals is opting for revolution—a generation that sees through the facade of the corporate state and has rejected as sellouts Obama, Sharpton, Jackson, Dyson and others among the African-American political elite.
It is absurd to have to say this, but New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, activist Al Sharpton and President Obama are in no way responsible for the coldblooded assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn on Saturday.
While acknowledging the outrage that followed the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., on Saturday after the unarmed teenager was shot in a police car by a still-unnamed police officer, on Tuesday activists like the Rev. Al Sharpton emphasized the need for calm and justice as the case is investigated.
If it’s spring, it must be time for Barack Obama’s annual drive-by of black America, where he piously lectures them on the state of their lives. He didn’t disappoint this year, treating the nation to two speeches on civil rights in a single week.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.