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"Real offender in this sex case is Georgia law"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this potent new editorial from the Altanta Journal-Constitution.  Here is how it starts: In its relentless efforts to expel Wendy Whitaker from her Columbia County home, the state of Georgia has crossed the line from protector to persecutor of its citizens.  The state isn?t inciting torch-wielding mobs to chase Whitaker from her home 20 miles west of Augusta.  But it is using a gaggle of state attorneys and a politically driven, poorly written sex offender law to wreck her life. Twelve years ago, Whitaker engaged in oral sex with a classmate in her sophomore class on high school property. She had just turned 17; the boy was three weeks shy of 16.  After they were caught, Whitaker pleaded guilty to sodomy, never realizing that the admission to a single act of adolescent stupidity would cast a shadow on her life that she could never escape...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on November 20, 2008 (boomark / email).