Oral Sex gets him a 10 year sentence

[kimba1]

wow 16
that aint right.

I`m a californian and that still sound too young.

damn!!

doesn`t that mean parents can kids those kids out well before graduating

[yellow_crane]

First, not everyone from the South is a biggot or politically (economically, socially, educationally, philosophically, or behaviorally) "backwater." I find that line of thought to be insulting, to say the least.

I agree with Domer in that some Prosecutorial discretion needed to take place here. He was taken to trial and acquitted for rape of a seventeen year-old girl. Fine. That is a deserving case for certain. Yet, for consensual relations with another girl close in age? Prison time is ridiculous in this case and it is up to the prosecutor to note the idiocy of adhering to such a strict view of the law. Clearly (as the law's author admits) the spirit of the law was quite different than the rigid literal view. Of course, as Domer also indicates, the judge should have seen that as well.

A little common sense from those two individuals would have gone a long way to helping the state of Georgia avoid what must be a costly legal issue.

JS, I think it has to do with mandatory sentecning guidelines here in Georgia. I beleive the Judge had no choice in the matter. I spoke to the District Attorney here about this case a couple of weeks ago at a civic function and he also indicated that the prosecutor had no choice to prosecute either.

Just had their hands tied, no doubt about it.

Can you proffer an opinion of just how much Jim Crow is written into Georgia's 'mandatory sentencing guidelines'?

Or is all that sorting out done by the good-ole-boy lawmen (You in Georgia now!) on the primary level of what passes for law in Georgia?

[BT]

Don't know how they do it in Florida but District Attorneys in Georgia are sworn to prosecute the law as written by the State Legislature.

BTW if Jim Crow were still in effect Wilson would have been shot escaping.

[Amianthus]

it happened in the South, and a more primitive and inhuman legal environment you are not going to find anywhere else in the U.S.A.   

I have stopped to help people broken down on the side of the road many times in the south, and usually a cop will come along and thank me for helping out.

I made the mistake of stopping to help someone in the northeast once.

A cop stopped, wrote me a ticket for obstructing traffic (because my car was not broken down, and I was stopped in the breakdown lane helping someone else) and drove away, without bothering to help the guy who was broken down.

A judge upheld the ticket, he just waved the fine.

From personal experience, I would say that the south is more humane than the northeast.

[Amianthus]

doesn`t that mean parents can kids those kids out well before graduating

Age of consent (to have sex) has nothing to do with age of majority.

And the age of consent is 16 in most states, 17 in a lot of others. It is 18 in a minority of states.