Turmoil at nexus of the law and teen sex

Even after a judge last month deemed Genarlow Wilson's 10-year prison sentence "a grave miscarriage of justice," the state of Georgia has kept him locked up.

Twenty-eight months ago, a Douglas County, Ga., jury found the former star athlete and high school scholar guilty of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex, as a 17-year-old, with his girlfriend, then 15, at a videotaped hotel-room party on New Year's Eve in 2004.

On Friday, the Georgia Supreme Court will hear an appeal by the state attorney general, who seeks to uphold the sentence.

The case, experts say, confronts the legacy of race-conscious justice in the South, as well as how attitudes toward teenage sexuality are evolving, or not, in the Bible Belt.

The court's ruling, if it favors Mr. Wilson, could even impel 1,300 other men serving long jail terms in Georgia for similar offenses to appeal their sentences.

"Those critical [of the prosecution] see it in terms of broader social ramifications and changing norms, but to [the district attorney] it's more about what happened in the hotel room," says Ron Carlson, a law professor at the University of Georgia in Athens (UGA).

Wilson's case has stirred enough of a ruckus to spark legislative reform at the statehouse. Earlier this year, Georgia lawmakers tempered tough state molestation laws by passing a "Romeo and Juliet" provision that takes into account similar ages of perpetrator and victim.

To keep the case moving forward and preserve the state's reputation, the Supreme Court moved Wilson's court date up by two months. The court is scheduled to address the merits of the so-called habeas corpus ruling in June that deemed the punishment unjust. Also at issue in the appeal: the subsequent denial of a bond hearing in Douglas County, where Wilson was originally tried.

Such actions by two branches of government indicate that prosecutors may have overreached their bounds in the case, says Donald Wilkes Jr., also of the UGA Law School.

The moves "tell us they're concerned," and that the sooner justices address it "the less Georgia will appear to be the medieval laughingstock to the rest of the country, and indeed the world," says Professor Wilkes.

How many blacks view the case

For many African-Americans in the US, the case represents a form of arcane justice in which a young black man without a criminal record can be sentenced to 10 years in prison for what many call consensual sex, while a vice president's adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, can have his two-year jail sentence for obstructing federal justice commuted by President Bush. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who is black, made this point on the stump in New Hampshire this month.

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