GOP DA Distributing Kiddie Porn? (RE: Genarlow Wilson)

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/56968/#more

GOP DA Distributing Kiddie Porn?

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:38 PM on July 15, 2007.
Richard Blair: The prosecutor in the controversial Genarlow Wilson case is under fire for distributing several copies of a tape featuring Wilson and another teen engaging in a sex act.


The Genarlow Wilson case got stranger a couple of days ago.

As a refresher, Wilson was prosecuted in a Georgia court for engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15 year old girl when he was 17. If I remember my adolescence (and, I freely admit that those times are quite a distance in my rearview mirror) this isn't a particularly dramatic violation of social mores. Teens have sex. But what the kids in my day didn't have were cheap digital video recorders to film an entire party.

The Republican DA who prosecuted the case, David McDade, has now released 35 copies of a video showing Wilson engaged in the sex act. The video was the primary evidence used to convict the young horn dog Wilson. Interestingly enough, the act that Wilson engaged in was a felony at the time he was charged (ergo, the 10 year sentence he received), but has subsequently been downgraded to a misdemeanor by the Georgia state legislature. Never-the-less, even though a judge ordered Wilson freed in early June, Wilson remains in jail because DA McDade appealed the ruling to the Georgia State Supreme Court.

When Scooter Libby's sentence was commuted, Genarlow Wilson became a bit of a cause celeb in Left Blogistan, the thinking being: if George Bush could commute the sentence of a true evil-doer, certainly, he could commute the sentence of a young man doing excessive time for a victimless crime.

Well, to make a long story short, we know what the chances are of that happening. But in a bizarre twist, in releasing the video, GOP DA McDade may have cost himself his job (at a minimum) and may be facing charges of distributing kiddie porn. While Wilson was "of age of consent" at the time the video was taken, the young woman was not. So, whether or not she consented to the act itself, she was still a minor, and McDade has released a sex video of a minor into the wild (or surely, it will make it into the YouTube wild eventually). Ergo, there are those who are calling for his resignation, and for kiddie porn distribution charges to be brought against him:

more...

that carried a ten year sentence on a seventeen year old boy for what was a consensual act.

If the young man's transgression was so horrific that the DA refuses to let him be released without fighting it tooth and nail, then the DA must also be held to the same standards.

Indeed the DA's transgression was even greater than the boy's. After all, the fifteen year old consented to oral sex with the convicted even though she was under the age of consent.

Where is the signed consent form from the fifteen year old to have this tape released? And even if she did sign a consent form, it wasn't worth the paper it was written on because she was under the age of consent.

What was Sauce for Genarlow Wilson should be Sauce for the DA.

With an added penalty for a man who surely should know releasing the tape was illegal and because he insists on contininuing to fight any release for the young man.