At each step in the now-infamous Genarlow Wilson legal saga, Douglass County prosecutor, David McDade, has behaved without any sense of decency or proportion. And now there’s a brand new development.

First let’s recap the underlying case: Genarlow Wilson is the football star from the state of Georgia, homecoming king, 3.2 grade point average boy with no priors who, at 17-years-old had the bad sense to have consensual oral sex on New Year’s Eve of his senior year with a schoolmate. His partner was a 15-year old girl who, like Wilson ran on the high school track team. According to both teenage participants, the sexual encounter was initiated by the girl, who was clearly having a night of questionable judgment herself.

Wilson was arrested for having oral sex with a minor-–never mind that he was a minor too. Incredibly, the offense carried a mandatory ten year prison sentence. Wilson was convicted of aggravated child molestation and sentenced to the required decade in lock-up. The law has since been changed to exclude teenagers, but the change doesn’t apply retroactively. As of now, Wilson has served nearly 29 months of his sentence. [For further backstory check my earlier posts here and here.]

After 28 months in prison, Wilson was fiinally set free by a sensible Monroe County Superior Court judge who reduced Wilson’s felony conviction to a misdemeanor. But then the state Attorney General Thurbert Baker and prosecutor McDade appealed the judge’s decision. So Wilson remained locked up. A few weeks ago, the young man’s attorney tried to get him out on an appeal bond, but the judge turned the bond request down. The Georgia State Supreme Court was to have heard the appeal in October.

Then today, suddenly there was good news. The State Supreme Court has moved up the appeal date by three months, to July 20—over the objections of the prosecutor. The court also decided to hold an expedited hearing on the Douglas County Superior Court judge’s decision to deny Wilson bond pending his appeal. (Here’s the AP story.)

Meanwhile, prosecutor David McDade continues to behave abominably. It seems that McDade’s original case against Wilson was greatly bolstered by the cooperation of Verna Cannon, the mother of the 15-year-old girl in question. Yet, after Wilson was sentenced, Cannon felt she’d made a mistake and talked to a local reporter about her thoughts on the case. In particular, she told the reporter that much of the reason she cooperated with the prosecution was because McDade told her that if she didn’t, he might charge her with neglect for letting her daughter attend an unchaperoned party.

In other words, he threatened her—in the nicest possible way.

When word of Cannon’s chat with the reporter got back to McDade, he sent two of his assistants to Cannon’s house to intimidate her into “clarifying” her remarks to the reporter about McDade’s alleged threats. Cannon refused to be pushed by the staffers’ goon-like behavior, and politely declined.

Now an audiotape of McDade’s staffers visit is floating around the Internet. According to this Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial, the recording ain’t pretty.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the audio and to part of the transcript.

UPDATE TWO: And just when you think things can’t get worse….this happens. (Sigh. Just follow the link.)

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