Genarlow Wilson -- Georgia is insane

[ALawPoker]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/10/26...ef=mpstoryview

This story is bizarre. Basically, someone was sentenced to TEN YEARS of prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old when he was 17.

???

Is that even illegal? Apparently so, and Georgia has recently changed this sort of conduct between consenting minors to a misdemeanor rather than a felony. Whew, what a concession, I'm glad it is only mildly illegal for high schoolers to give each other head. It's good that minors often will not be charged for murder, but could face TEN YEARS for sexual relations with someone two years younger than them.

This just blows my mind. It's only one example, and [censored] happens, but if this isn't good evidence that a state monopoly on justice is really, really bad, then I don't know what is. Show me a private arbitrator who decides that the 17-year-old owes the 15-year-old something equal to 10 years of prison and I will show you a private arbitrator that goes out of business fast. It just couldn't happen. It's the type of injustice that would be totally inconceivable if state bureaucracy was not in charge.

I mean, when I heard the story in the background playing on CNN, I first thought he was an adult who had consensual relations with a 15-year-old, and I was like "hmm, ya, 10 years is ridiculous, it's good that they overturned that." I assumed it was some sort of reasonable debate, and still thought it was newsworthy. But then the fact that HE WAS SEVENTEEN and it was a two year difference just makes this impressively ridiculous. This could easily be a high school junior getting head from a sophomore, if that puts it in the correct perspective. TEN YEARS IN PRISON!

Obviously the fact that he's black is why this happened. But the point is this happened to a human being in the United States of America in 2005. Isn't that [censored] scary?

Government does not work. I used to think it was at least good for the sake of a clear authority, but I came to my senses on that, and examples like this are just empirical icing on the cake.