some thoughts before the Wilson trial, or thinking and feeling thru a case that sucks…

In front of tomorrow’s trial on Genarlow Wilson’s appeal, The Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC), has a story on his lawyer, BJ Bernstein. At the center of the story is a question about the many ways she has kept Wilson’s story in the media.

And it’s interesting, no? On the one hand we imagine that too much media attention perverts justice, insofar as it gives us a sense that a case is more about public opinion than it is about “the law.” But that might be more an argument regarding the Paris Hiltons, and less one for the Genarlow Wilsons.

Without media attention, where would this case be, really? Clearly the attention has made the district attorney, David McDade, nervous. Wanting his own slice of media approbation likely figured in his decision to release the sex tape used in Wilson’s original trial. And that’s nasty. As I’ve noted in a comment elsewhere, McDade’s failure to block out the faces on the video speaks to a fundamental disregard for meaningful justice and to his disengagement with the alleged victims in this case. This, it seems, is less about justice and more about winning. Right now, it looks like McDade is the one lacking confidence in the “facts” of the case.

My heart sinks when I think of that tape because I am hard pressed to imagine that something bad didn’t happen to those girls that night. And whether that thing be about teen sex, about athletes and groupies, or even about some astonishingly bad judgment, one thing remains– something likely wasn’t right. But those girls’ voices are noticibly absent from the aftermath, so I dance around this point, not knowing what that night was supposed to mean to them. I like to imagine this silence has been a matter of self-protection, even as the tape release might potentially destroy that as well.

It’s hard, but this case isn’t about the sex; it’s about the adjudication thereof. With bad judgment Wilson made himself vulnerable to the law, but it is the law’s– the DA and attorney general’s– zealotry that makes the consequences of that bad judgment suspicious, as the notion of justice is overtaken by the desire to punish something else or something “more.”

As Sherry F. Colb points out, “If we did not know that Wilson’s disturbing predicament had arisen in the United States, we might assume that we were hearing about a case in a theocracy. His case, however, sheds light on a disturbing fact regarding our criminal justice system, a reality about which we have grown complacent: people in the U.S. are routinely condemned to spend years in brutal prisons as punishment for behavior that harms no one… [T]his treatment of victimless crime is symptomatic of a criminal law that is strongly influenced by religious views about sexual morality.”

But maybe this all moot, for it is my impression that any final decisions will be made in regards to which legal and legislative apparatuses have the legal right to “make the call.”

An interesting read? An old CNN transcript, in which the tape is discussed. The jury was unaminous that no rape had occurred, but were required to make their judgment (apparently the jury foreman started crying while reading the sentence?) based on the law.

The president cannot pardon Genarlow Wilson, nor can Georgia’s Governor. Wilson, no matter what we think should happen, is deeply entangled in the system, and at this point only the system can make this right.

Or the prosecutor, Eddie Barker, who has the power to set the sentence aside.

But we know where he stands, apparently claiming that “the one person who can change things at this point is Genarlow. The ball’s in his court.”

No, Eddie, it’s in yours.

Update:

Southern Criminal Law and Justice has a nice explanation of what I was trying to get out by naming “the system.” “Genarlow, Innocence Lost, and Barbarous Procedure.” Check it out!