Judge releases Genarlow Wilson

A judge has overturned the sentence of Genarlow Wilson, a 17-year-old convicted of aggravated child molestation for having sex with a 15-year-old classmate.

Wilson, an honor student and football star, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a lifetime of being registered as a sex offender. His case had become a rallying point for people who believe he was wrongly convicted. A Monroe County, Ga., judge today (Monday) reduced that sentence to 12 months -- time Wilson has already served. He also voided the requirement that Wilson register as a sex offender.

The judge's ruling basically mirrors a Georgia state law passed earlier this year in response to Wilson's case. The legislature approved the law because of the outcry over Wilson's sentence, but did not make it retroactive.

Wilson, now 21, was one of six high school boys who rented a motel room, stocked it with liquor and marijuana, and invited female classmates to join them for a New Years party. The party came to light after a 17-year-old girl awoke the next morning naked except for socks. She called her mother saying she could remember nothing about the night before and thought she had been raped.

When police investigated, they found the motel room littered with condoms and a videotape showing the 17-year-old girl having sex with several of the boys, including Wilson, and a 15-year-old girl performing oral sex on Wilson and some of the others. The 15-year-old said she did not drink or smoke pot, and performed the acts willingly. All of the boys except Wilson pleaded guilty. Wilson stood trial, was convicted and received a mandatory 10-year sentence.

UPDATE 6/12/07 8:20 a.m.
Attorney General appeals; Wilson still in prison

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker has appealed the judge's decision to release Wilson. Rather than being released, Wilson remains in jail pending the appeal. Wilson has turned down an alternative plea bargain offered by Baker because it would require him to plead guilty to a felony. Though the proposed plea would remove the charge from his record and take him off the sex offender list once a post-release rehabilitation program was completed, it would also subject him to a 15-year sentence if he was found to have violated the conditions of his early release.

Trial in football player slaying moved

Thirteen years after University of Kentucky football player Trent DiGiuro was killed by a sniper, his accused murderer has won a change of venue.

The Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting that a Fayette Circuit Judge ruled May 8 that Shane Ragland's murder trial had received too much publicity in Lexington, where DiGiuro was killed. Ragland's trial will be moved to Louisville.

DiGiuro was shot and killed on his twenty-first birthday, July 17, 1994, as he celebrated on the front porch of a house he had rented on Woodland Avenue, near the UK campus. Ragland, a fellow student, was convicted of the murder in 2002 and sentenced to 30 years in prison, but his conviction was later overturned.

Ragland has maintained his innocence, and has his own web site presenting his side of the story and offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to "the arrest and conviction of the actual killer of Trent DiGiuro (not Shane Ragland)."

A depressing truth

I spent much of today at a murder scene, taking photographs and walking the rutted road that the alleged killers took when they brought the victim to the site, killed him and dumped his body. It wasn't a fresh scene -- the body was discovered and removed some six months ago -- but it still brought the truth about violent death into sharp focus once again.

I've been at death scenes -- natural deaths, accidental deaths and murders -- many times. It's part of the job when you're a reporter, and I did that job for 18 years. It's also part of being a true-crime author. Every death is different, but there is one overriding truth in all of them: it is not glamorous. On television, in movies and in music, violent death is high art. The reality is that violent death is depressing and very often degrading.

The elderly victim from the crime scene I visited today was strangled in the middle of a muddy road, and his face was held in a puddle to make sure he was dead. Then he was dragged along the road and up a hill, losing scraps of clothing, shoes, and a cap in the process. Finally, his body was rolled down a hill toward a stagnant, algae-covered pond and left crumpled next to a foot-high pile of empty beer bottles. He lay there for two weeks before police finally located his body.

That place says more about the attitude of the killer or killers than any testimony at trial could ever say. This man's life was no more valuable than an empty bottle, no more than the rusted hulk of an appliance dumped over the hill a scant 50 yards away. The killer thought no more of this man than the jagged shards of coal and slate over which the body was dragged after the murder.

In the wake of the Virginia Teach shootings, attention is focused again on the movies, and music that might or might not incite kids into violent behavior. Rather than attack the movies, I believe a more effective means of addressing young people's fascination with death would be to expose them to the real thing. Real murder victims aren't glamorous. They're dumped with the garbage, or found floating face down in a cesspool.

A tragedy and a failure

Thirty-three dead. Twenty-four wounded. The number of dead and wounded in the Virginia Tech massacre speak not only to the unbelievable tragedy of the shooting, but also the failure of our society on many different levels.

Why would someone kill 33 of his fellow students? Why didn't the college cancel classes immediately when the first two bodies were discovered -- two hours before the deadlier rampage began? Why were students not warned of a possible shooter on campus earlier?

Police are still investigating the incident, but one thing has become abundantly clear already: If future tragedies are to be avoided, students must be taught how to respond to these emergencies. Witness after witness in the Blacksburg college said they hid under their desks while the shooter pumped bullet after bullet into their classmates. So far there is no word of anyone attempting to stop him. Students blocked the door in only one known case.

Students in the U.S. are taught from their earliest experience in school not to fight back. They are taught to be passive -- to take any abuse without striking out to protect themselves. If they do defend themselves, they receive the same punishment as the aggressor. This is a ludicrous policy. Confronted with a crazed shooter, passive behavior will only get you killed.

The first response should be to barricade the door and prevent the shooter from getting in. If that fails, students should be taught to respond with force. A man with a gun will probably wound an attacker, but he will certainly kill many if they hunker down under flimsy school desks. Those desks would be much more effective as missiles than as shields.

Would the number of dead have been less had students fought back? It's impossible to say. But the numbers certainly couldn't have been higher.

Making the world safe for skiers

You're a clerk on the midnight shift at 7-Eleven when this guy walks up wearing a ski mask, lays a candy bar on the counter and reaches for his hip pocket. Do you:

A) Scream, wet your pants and hand him the cash drawer
B) Grab the .38 from under the counter and drop the sucker, or
C) Take his money, hand him his change and wish him a good night?

Kevin Lambert of Winstead, Conn., hopes you don't take the Dirty Harry approach. Lambert was once arrested and sentenced to perform community service for posing for a picture in a convenience store while wearing a ski mask. Now he's started a web site dedicated to "Striving to keep America Warm By Combating Ski Mask Discrimination."

Lambert and a group of his friends now regularly go around town in ski masks to remove the stigma associated with the full-face toboggans that he says has been created by terrorists and robbers. Let's hope he lives to fulfill his dream.

Advertising run amok

First, a bunch of dimwits who thought they were funny posted signs that people mistook for bombs in strategic locations around Boston to advertise a cartoon. Now a softdrink maker, who I won't identify here for fear of giving it the publicity so it so desires, has caused the historic Granary Burying Ground to be closed. The British-owned company hinted that it might have buried a coin worth up to $1 million dollars inside the cemetery, which is the final resting place of my namesake Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and other historic figures.

Treasure hunters showed up at the gate determined to find the coin, forcing Boston parks officials to lock the gates and post guards. The company has since admitted that it hid a coin worth $10,000 behind the lip of a stone doorway to a 200-year-old crypt.

Turner Broadcasting paid the city $2 million to offset the cost of police used to investigate the sign incident, and police charged the two men who placed the signs with crimes. Let's hope the Brits have to pony up the same sort of dollars to pay for their ill-conceived plan. The people who placed the coin, and ordered it's placement should also be charged. I can't help but wonder if someone involved got some perverse pleasure from the thought that treasure hunters might start digging up the fathers of the American Revolution.

The politics of sex crimes

The Georgia legislature is finally poised to do something about the case of Genarlow Wilson, a 17-year-old convicted of aggravated child molestation for having sex with a 15-year-old classmate.

Wilson, an honor student and football star, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a lifetime of being registered as a sex offender. His case has become a rallying point for people who believe he was wrongly convicted.

A web site has even been created asking people all over the world to sign a petition saying, "I register my outrage and object to the wrongful conviction of Genarlow Wilson for Aggravated Child Molestation for a consensual sexual act with another teen. A ten year prison sentence is wrong. He should not have to register as a sexual offender."

As usual, well-intentioned people have over-simplified the situation.

Wilson was one of six high school boys who rented a motel room, stocked it with liquor and marijuana, and invited female classmates to join them for a New Years party. The party came to light after a 17-year-old girl awoke the next morning naked except for socks. She called her mother saying she could remember nothing about the night before and thought she had been raped.

When police investigated, they found the motel room littered with condoms and a videotape showing the 17-year-old girl having sex with several of the boys, including Wilson, and a 15-year-old girl performing oral sex on Wilson and some of the others. The 15-year-old said she did not drink or smoke pot, and performed the acts willingly. All of the boys except Wilson pleaded guilty. Wilson stood trial, was convicted and received a mandatory 10-year sentence.

Now people are screaming racism and demanding a full pardon for Wilson. Never mind that all of the victims and all of the accused were of the same race.

As a result of the conviction, the Georgia Legislature relaxed the law, reducing what Wilson admitted doing to a misdemeanor. Georgia courts refused to apply it's provisions to Wilson because the law specifically states it does not apply to cases before its passage.

The legislature is now taking what seems to me to be a well-reasoned step. It is considering another law, Senate Bill 37, that would allow judges to decide whether the sentences of people convicted prior to the new law should be reduced. You can read about it in The Macon Telegraph. If you feel Wilson should not have received 10 years in prison, then register your support for the new measure by e-mailing State Sen. Emanuel Jones at the following address: emanuel.jones@senate.ga.gov