Attention Barack: Thurbert Baker Is In Desperate Need of Your Audaciousness!The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that a 15-year-old girl's mother said Genarlow Wilson should not have been criminally charged for allowing her daughter to perform oral sex on him in 2003.
A day later, the mother changed her statement after a home visit from prosecutors.
Some have called the prosecution's visit "pure intimidation." The mother's interview made clear that the encounter between then 17 year-old Wilson and the young teenage victim "was definitely a consensual act," B.J. Bernstein, a lawyer for Wilson, said.
Meanwhile, Georgia's Supreme Court has agreed to hear the state's arguments for keeping Wilson in prison. The court said it would hear the case in October.
Genarlow, now 21, has served more than 28 months in prison. A jury convicted him in 2005 of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with an underage girl during a 2003 party.
If Wilson had had sexual intercourse with the teen, he would have fallen under Georgia's "Romeo and Juliet" exception.
Under the law in 2003, however, oral sex for teens still constituted aggravated child molestation and carried a mandatory sentence, plus being permanent identified as a sex offender.
While lawmakers last year voted to close that loophole, there is an issue whether the new law could apply retroactively to Wilson's case.
Attorney General Thurbert Baker is catching heat -- and rightfully so -- for pretending to be Black while appealing a lower court's decision to void Wilson's 10-year sentence. He maintains he has no choice under the law.
The hell he doesn't!This was the same argument used to keep us enslaved in the antebellum South, that kept miscegenation and Jim Crow laws in effect and that gave legitimacy to school segregation that still permeates public schools in cities across the nation.
These immoral actions were given legitimacy by White men who later became US Supreme Court Justices. Guess what, those racist bastards were wrong and White men with integrity we're trying to tell them that even then.
Speaking as a former California judge, Baker's argument that Georgia's Superior Court had no authority to reduce or modify the trial court's sentence is unpersuasive and demonstrates cowardice. In the age of Barack, that dog no longer hunts!
While calling the sentence "harsh," Baker added: "It looms much larger than just this Genarlow Wilson case, and we have to keep that in mind."
As some teens are saying of late, that argument is so "burnt." I mean really, what's the point of supporting more diversity in elective government when candidates who look like us can't even muster up the courage to do what's right.
At least Baker has come to his senses in one respect. When Wilson's lawyer seek to get him released on bond pending the appeal at a July 5 hearing, Baker will not oppose the request.
In Washington, members of the Congressional Black Caucus criticized Wilson's sentence and accused Baker of seeking to "perpetuate the injustice." "This case represents yet another tragic breakdown in the criminal justice system that, unfortunately, fails young African American males too often," the group wrote in a statement.
Georgia's White Republican Governor Sonny Perdue has also weighed in on the national controversy, suggesting the controversy is casting Georgia "in an unfair light.""Treating Wilson differently from the other young men in the case might be unfair," Perdue said.
Given Georgia's history with Black men, that really is an understatement governor!