aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Judges need leeway in teen sex cases
Maureen Downey for the AJC editorial board on the Widner plea deal and calling for a fairer approach to teen sex sentencing:
A judge ought to be able to look at those facts and determine how long Widner should serve rather than be bound to a 10-year sentence. Voters elect judges in Georgia to make those tough calls.
Yet lawmakers eroded the powers of judges by mandating the sentences they can impose. “We should trust our judges to make decisions and not pen them in with mandatory minimum sentences,” says [Widner’s attorney, J. Scott ] Key. “We now have a system where there is little opportunity for the punishment to fit the facts.”
Widner is leaving jail a felon, which means he’ll be on the state’s sex offender registry. The registry is another example of the Legislature’s abandoning common sense and fairness, putting consensual sexual activity between teens on the same level as violent rape or child molestation. [...]
The courts must have greater flexibility in teen sex cases where force is not involved and where both teens are willing participants. Neither Widner nor Wilson is a hero for what he did. But antiquated laws that view older teens as dangerous predators and younger ones as helpless victims ignore the realities of high school society where seniors and freshmen often date.
Most Georgians understand that a world of difference exists between two classmates having sex and a 35-year-old molesting a 10-year-old. Georgia’s laws and its sex offender registry need to recognize that distinction.
