One Cheer for Al Sharpton
David Weigel | July 5, 2007, 5:56pm
The professional agitator is
barrelling pompadour-first into the Genarlow Wilson case.
Sharpton did not mention Attorney General Thurbert Baker by name, but called on "those that are in office because of us" to take action to get 21-year-old Genarlow Wilson freed.
"Don't walk over the bodies of martyrs and achieve a position of personal stature, and then forget how you got there and sit there in silence while your children are locked in jail for unjust sentences," said Sharpton, a radio talk-show host and former Democratic presidential candidate. "There's something ungrateful about those who would benefit off the blood of martyrs and not stand up for those that put you there in the first place."
Baker, one of two African-American officials elected statewide in Georgia, said in response, "I have the utmost respect and appreciation for the sacrifices made by Dr. King and the other leaders of the civil rights movement who changed America for the better.
"Those leaders also believed in a system governed by laws, because the alternative is a lawless society. I am doing no less than following the law that I have sworn to uphold."
Did you know the civil rights movement was all about following the law? Amazing. Someone owes
Woolworth's a fat reparation check for all of those lost lunch counter profits.
Radley Balko has been
all over the case.
Robert Stacy McCain | July 5, 2007, 10:34pm | #
I was doing such things with my 15 year old girlfriend when I was 16!
Ah, so the personal is political ....
It is not, however, an argument. If I were to say, hypothetically, that I have driven 110 mph in a 55 mph zone, does that mean that the fines levied against those who commit such crimes constitute an injustice?
Understand that I am not arguing that the Georgia law was wise and good. Nor does my argument depend on what your opinion of teenage orgies may be. What I'm saying is that the (apparently widespread) perception of the Wilson case as a grave injustice is largely a function of a media machine that is presenting a one-sided picture of the case.
Notice what the Newton County D.A. says in his column:
After reviewing the videotape of the defendants' acts and taking all the evidence into account ...
Do you know what was on that videotape? Does David Weigel know what was on that videotape? No.
But lawyers for Wilson's five co-defendants knew what was on that videotape, and they knew they didn't want their clients facing a Douglas County jury that had seen that videotape. So they copped a plea -- the same deal that Wilson refused.
Dumb move, Wilson. Next case.
What we are dealing with here is a Hayekian knowledge gap. People who are remote from the circumstance are basing their judgment on a partial knowledge of the facts, filling in their knowledge gaps with a sort of moralistic
gestalt.
Thurbert Baker and David McDade have access to knowledge of this case that I don't have, that you don't have, and that the
New York Times doesn't have. Absent any evidence of perfidy or malice on the part of the knowledgeable actors, and given the uncontested fact that Wilson was a party to the same crime for which five other men are serving prison time, I am skeptical of those who claim that Wilson is a 21st-century Dreyfuss in need of a 21st-century Zola.
If you don't like the law, change the law. But it is rather absurd (and perhaps insulting) to suggest that Wilson and his friends were latter-day Thoreaus and Gandhis, engaged in a courageous act of civil disobedience on New Year's Eve 2004.
Charles | July 6, 2007, 10:56am | #
Look, Charles: Six guys were involved. Five copped a plea. One took his chances on a jury trial and was convicted.
If Wilson goes free as a result of this kind of media-driven victimhood crusade, wouldn't that deny "equality before the law" to the five guys who took the plea bargain?
I am not -- repeat not -- arguing that every teenager who gets to third base with his girlfriend deserves to be in prison. But most teenagers are not so stupid as to provide prosecutors with the kind of evidence involved in this case.
It seems to me, Charles, that you are arguing for a Nerf-world, where everything is foam-padded so that no one ever faces consequences for their actions, no matter how stupid those actions may be.
Consequences are important. This kid should probably get some punishment: losing his football scholarship, community service, something like that would be reasonable (though I still would think that it's because of a stupid law).
Furthermore, we're not talking about Mumia or someone like that, who shot a cop and deserves to be punished. We're talking about a 17 year old, a good kid who went to a bad party and got oral sex from a girl two years younger than him, someone who didn't want to plea in part because he's helping his single mom raise his 8 year old sister, and taking the plea would have meant registering a sex offender (just read that! Consensual sex = sex offender).
It's difficult to even wrap your head around it. If one of your neighbors was on the sex offender list, required to tell everyone in the neighborhood, and told you that story, would you believe them?
We're not talking about whether or not the punishment is deserved (I don't think it is, but I'm not bent out of shape over the fact of punishment). The question is whether this punishment is in any way commensurate to the action. And, of course, it's not. The fact that he refused the plea, which apparently for you absolves the prosecution entirely, makes this even more offensive. It's obvious the prosecution is punishing this kid just for the hell of it, to show what happens when you won't deal.
Again, this case boils down to a 17 year old getting a ten year prison sentence and having his life ruined for getting oral sex from someone two years younger than him. It's scarcely believable. In fact, if Balko didn't post this sort of prosecutorial misconduct all the time, I wouldn't believe it.
Robert Stacy McCain | July 6, 2007, 6:56pm | #
Jack Jackson 3rd | July 6, 2007, 11:38am | #
Sigh. Abuse is not an argument, Jack.
People respond to incentives. A libertarian believes this, yes?
The punishment of crime is a form of incentive -- a disincentive.
The Georgia legislature, evidently, believed that oral sex with a 15-year-old was a crime worthy of a very powerful disincentive, and thus proscribed this act by a law that carried a 10-year mandatory sentence with no eligibility for parole.
Genarlow Wilson violated that law, and was therefore subject to the sentence. The prosecutor offered a plea bargain that would have imposed a lesser sentence -- 5 years, with the possibility of parole. Five of Wilson's co-defendants accepted that deal. Instead, Wilson went to trial, was convicted, and sentenced to 10 years with no parole.
You may argue that 10 years is too long of a sentence for the crime that Wilson committed -- and the Georgia legislature evidently agrees, since they have since altered the law.
You may argue that, in rigorously applying the letter of the law, the court violated the spirit of the law -- and Rep. Matt Towery agrees that the law he sponsored did not envision it being applied to the circumstances in the Wilson case.
You may argue that the whole notion of mandatory minimum sentencing is an affront to the Anglo-American tradition of jurisprudence, which has customarily afforded tremendous leeway to judges and juries in sentencing. And this is where you will see me nodding in eager assent. (Even in capital murder cases, the death penalty is not
mandatory.)
Any of those arguments is supportable by evidence and logic, even if we concede that those who disagree with them might also employ evidence and logic on the other side.
What is insupportable is the argument that Genarlow Wilson is a
victim. Every day in America, men and women are convicted of crimes on the basis of evidence far less conclusive than the videotape that convicted Wilson. Every day, these convicted criminals are compelled to pay fines or serve jail time, despite whatever mitigating circumstances might be argued in their favor. They didn't know what they were doing was illegal, or other people had committed similar acts without being apprehended and convicted.
Drug cases, traffic cases, child custody disputes, domestic violence -- routinely, the proceedings of our legal system produce outcomes which can be viewed as unjust. There are plenty of people sitting in prison today who might claim "injustice" as plausibly as Genarlow Wilson. But because the particulars of their cases don't lend themselves so easily to the victimhood narrative, or because they don't have media-savvy lawyers, you've never even heard of those other "victims."
No system of law enforcement can ever be perfect. Some criminals literally get away with murder, while others go to the death chamber. But this media-generated trend of anointing certain criminals with celebrity victimhood -- the cold-blooded gangbanger
Tookie Williams comes to mind -- and then demonizing as morally inferior all who refuse to accept the myth of the sainted victim, is dangerous to the basic foundations of a free society.
I fully realized, Jack, that in protesting against victim status for Genarlow Wilson, I was risking reiteration of the sort of
ad hominem attack you have provided. If, however,
Reason is dedicated to "free minds," then it follows that opinions ought not be stigmatized because they are merely unpopular, nor should facts be disregarded simply because they do not reinforce current conventional wisdom.
When I saw my friend David Weigel (who should know better) saying "one cheer" for Al Sharpton, with all the other commenters lining up to endorse the victimhood narrative spoonfed to the media by Wilson's supporters -- and given my direct knowledge of Douglas County, Ga. -- I felt compelled to risk calumny by opposing this one-sided argument. I'd rather be unpopular than ride on a bandwagon of half-truth.
If Genarlow Wilson walks free tomorrow, I wish him well, and would buy him a beer if he should happen to show up at Brookhiser's on Fairburn Road in Douglasville next time I'm down home. (They got a rockin' band there.)
