How can this be called justice?

Genarlow Wilson is young man who had good grades, a promising future, and no criminal history -- so how did he end up being sentenced to 10 years in prison without parole and a lifetime registration as a sexual offender?

At 17 years old he had consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Wilson, now 20, has been in jail now for two years. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Wilson, who is black, is trapped in a legal vise intended to ensure severe penalties for child molesters and other sex offenders, navigating a maze of legal technicalities that for him seems to hold nothing but dead ends. Some critics of the sentence also say Mr. Wilson is caught in a system that metes out disproportionately harsh sentences to black defendants.

The Georgia Legislature, disturbed by Wilson's conviction, has changed laws regarding sex between teenagers. Most sex acts between teens will now be treated as a misdemeanor. What they didn't do was to make the law retroactive.

"While I am very sympathetic to Wilson's argument regarding the injustice of sentencing this promising young man with good grades and no criminal history to 10 years in prison without parole and a lifetime registration as a sexual offender," wrote Justice Carol W. Hunstein, "this court is bound by the Legislature's determination that young persons in Wilson's situation are not entitled to the misdemeanor treatment."

What makes this case even more outrageous is that when it took place there was already a "Romeo and Juliet" exception in the law for sexual intercourse between teenagers.

"Had Genarlow had intercourse with this girl, had he gotten her pregnant, he could only have been charged with a misdemeanor and punished up to 12 months," said Brenda Joy Bernstein, Mr. Wilson's lawyer.

Wilson has been offered a plea deal, but he refuses -- and who could blame him!

"Even after serving time in prison, I would have to register as a sex offender wherever I lived and if I applied for a job for the rest of my life, all for participating in a consensual sex act with a girl just two years younger than me," he told a reporter for Atlanta magazine last year, adding that he would not even be able to move back in with his mother because he has an 8-year-old sister. "It's a lifelong sentence in itself. I am not a child molester."

Genarlow Wilson has served his time ... now it's time to set him free!