Skewed priorities: Georgia case example of law enforcement gone wrong

In a world where there are hundreds of real crimes against children by adults every year, the Genarlow Wilson story is a puzzler.

The teenager was arrested, tried and sent to prison for 10 years for having consentual sex with another teenager — at age 15, a minor. He was 17 at the time. This past week, the Georgia man — now 21 — was set free after a court ruled that his punishment for his crime was “cruel and unusual.”

And it was.

What a waste of time this case was — and how tragic that it took so many years of a young man’s life.

Wilson is no saint — but neither is the girl with whom he was videotaped having sex. The parents of both teens should have been the ones with the job to do, not the courts.

The point is, why were Georgia officials wasting time chasing teen shenanigans when there were much more serious violations going on all around them?

All they had to do was head to Internet chat rooms to find more dangerous suspects.

This young man will recover, but someone needs to take a closer look at this law — and its application in the real world. Otherwise, there could be more than a few teenagers in Georgia who will be facing more than just being grounded for their activities.

Published in Editorials on October 29, 2007 11:24 AM