(I originally posted this in the BBQ Pit as a “reverse pitting”, since this was originally discussed in a nine-page, 300-post Pit thread a while back, but Giraffe didn’t think it belonged there. So I’ll try it here.)
The Georgia Supreme Court got this one right:
Good for the GA court. That whole thing was a miscarriage of justice.
'Bout time too. Poor kid.
I’m glad the kid is out, of course - but does anyone else find the court’s reasoning a bit troubling? The problem Wilson had was that when the state legislature changed the law to make his actions a misdemeanor, they declined to make it retroactive, so it didn’t reach him. Remember, the legislature could have made the law retroactive, if they wished - they chose not to.
But, in making the determination that Wilson’s sentence was cruel and unusual, one factor the Georgia Supreme Court used was the fact that the legislature had changed the law to make his crime a misdemeanor. So, when the legislature decided to pass a new law and not make it retroactive, the court decided that this provided support for the proposition that the original law had been “cruel and unusual”, and thus contributed to the decision to release Wilson.
Don’t get me wrong - I think Wilson’s sentence was cruel and unusual, and I’m thrilled he’s out. But the Georgia Supreme Court made that happen by taking a decision of the legislature (that it was not necessary to make the changed law retroactive), and using that as support for the precisely opposite conclusion. The thing is, it’s not clear that the court would have reached the same decision if they hadn’t had the new law to buttress their argument.
So - a clear expression of legislative intent provided a key buttress for a court’s decision to act precisely opposite to that legislative intent. That doesn’t seem entirely kosher.
I’m not familiar with the case, but I think the truism about laws as sausages applies here. Whatever clause had to get into the law as written for whatever political reason, the court had to apply it in a sensible & constitutional way. Constitutionally it was, “cruel & unusual,” to keep Wilson in for 10 years while eight more perpetrators could be indicted, serve their time, & be released for the same kind of crime.
It seems to me that the Court considered the fact that the Legislature had deemed the “crime” too minor to be anything more than a misdemeanor, rather than the fact that the re-classification wasn’t made retroactive.
If I were Mr. Wilson I would relocate outside of the mighty state of Georgia s fast as was legal to do so.
Rough to stay out of jail when the Sheriff, Police Department, Attorney General and D.A. have a serious hard-on for you and would do just about anything legal or otherwise to throw you back into jail for a long, long time.
Cops hate being told they’re wrong. Just hate it. Me, I’d move out and never look back at Georgia. IMHO if that young man so much as jaywalks he’ll be doing hard time.
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