Okay, where did we last leave off? Oh, right. Earlier this week, David McDade, the Georgia district attorney who has persecuted prosecuted Genarlow Wilson well past what most anyone else sees as reasonable, moral or sensible, was sending out two of his staffers to harass one of the prosecution’s witnesses. Evidently, the woman had the temerity to speak to the press and, in doing so, said something McDade didn’t like, so he tasked the staffers with persuading her to call the reporter and take her statements back.
(Please don’t make me do all the multiple links again. If you don’t know the Wilson back story, click here, and then retrace the path of electronic bread crumbs.)
Now, a day or two later, we have the issue of….THE VIDEO TAPE.
It seems that last month the vile and loathsome weanie prosecutor (“weanie” is used in this context as a technical term), released the video tape that started the whole legal mess to begin with. It shows then-17-year-old Wilson having sex on New Year’s Eve (at a no-adults-present party held in a hotel room) with another 17-year-old. (Wilson was tried and acquitted of raping the 17-year-old.) Then later, it shows him engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. It was the oral sex incident that sent Wilson to prison for ten years. (Another idiot kid at the party made the video.)
McDade’s excuse for releasing the teen porn tape was that the Associated Press asked for it under the state’s open records law. (What’s a poor prosecutor to do?) So, while he was at it, McDade passed out 35 more copies of the tape. According to his office, he gave it to multiple media outlets, a passel of lawmakers, various “members of the public,” and several people he randomly passed in the men’s room.
(Okay, I made that last part up. But it’s not all that far off.)
On Tuesday, a string of people-–including Georgia state senator Emanuel Jones—suggested that McDade was a morally reprehensible weasel (or words to that effect), who only released the tape because he thought it made his position on the case look less, you know, offensive. In other words, it was a self-serving act.
McDade’s critics pointed out that, in doing so, he victimized two young women who were not, by the way, accused of any crime, but who, because of a private instance of youthful bad judgment will now have an amateur porn tape of themselves distributed in perpetuity on the Internet. Thank you David McDade.
(Do you have kids, David? If so, are any of them daughters? Or do you have nieces maybe? How would you feel if somebody jerk DA got hold of a tape of one of them having sex with a classmate in a foolish and vulnerable moment, and handed it out to any and all comers? Just curious.)
The truth is, McDade had a number of choices when faced with the AP’s request.
He could have:
1. Given out the tape but concealed the girls’ faces
2. Sought a protective order to keep the video under seal since there were minors involved.
On Tuesday, a defensive McDade pronounced his own action perfectly legal.
But, on Wednesday, an Atlanta federal attorney named David Nahmias said….actually, no, that the tape constituted “child pornography under federal law.”
“Federal laws,” wrote Nahmias in his official statement, “prohibit the knowing distribution, receipt and possession of child pornography — that is, visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct — under most circumstances.” Theses federal laws, he said, “trump any contrary requirement of the state’s Open Records Act that may exist.”
Now mind you, Nahmias didn’t actually mention McDade by name, nor would his office “confirm or deny” whether he’s got a criminal investigation going against McDade regarding the tape release.
On Thursday, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, two state senators, a state representative, a civil rights veteran, and the pastor of a prominent Baptist Church all held a press conference to say that McDade had engaged in “overzealous” prosecution and subsequent mishandling of the Genarlow Wilson case. Now, said the group, McDade has strayed into criminal territory and the prosecutor ought to be prosecuted.
The clever law students over at DeNovo.com think that, while it’s illegal to possess the tape, McDade was on firm legal ground giving it out. (Even if his morals were in the toilet.)
I’d love to think that they’re wrong, but I suspect they’re right.
Meanwhile, a reporter from one of the local NBC news affiliates explains why they don’t have the tape.
PS: A chapeau tip and thanks to commenter Woody for gently bugging me to revisit this story.
PPS: Apologies to Doug Berman at Sentencing, Law and Policy for the duplicate headline. Hey, Doug, I really didn’t see yours until after I posted. Honest. (And, anyway, imitation is the sincerest form of….yadda, yadda, yadda…)
Granted, the kids involved did some really, really stupid stuff. Errors in judgment abound. The activity was crass, coarse, foolish, and fool hardy. Aspects of what the kids engaged in might even be illegal. And, one of them has gone to prison for it. What is beginning to make me ricochet off the walls about this case is, the adult, presumed to be professional, with the responsibility to represent the community’s interests in this seems bound and determined to raise the ‘awful factor’ by an order of magnitude. What happened to bring this to media attention was bad enough. But, David McDade has compounded awful right into the stratosphere. How much worse does the Wilson case need to be before you’re satisfied Mr. McDade?
With any luck at all, McDade will go the way of Mike Nifong.
“presumed to be professional” Interesting, I haven’t seen anything out of McDade in this case that would even closely resemble a professional. 😉
Professional? Yeah. Well. Okay. GM, would you accept that I’m offering the benefit of the doubt? Woody keeps telling me that there are nuances to this case that I simply don’t understand, and (presumably) McDade does. Actually, being the good conservative that he is, Woody doesn’t say nuances. He says complexities.
The complexities, as I see it, have to do with granting an exemption for Wilson that might set precedence and also set free really dangerous child predators. Further complexities, as expressed by Georgia’s Attorney General, are legitimate and have to do with jurisdictions of courts. You can’t shop county courts and have the court of one county overturn the ruling of a court from another county.
What the D.A. is doing has nothing to do with any of that and everything to do with covering himself and acting like a jerk. If the conviction is reversed, the D.A. might have some liability.
The governor should just grant a pardon, and I don’t know why he doesn’t.
As an extreme the other way, in Douglas County’s neighboring Carroll County, a judge ruled that a 20 year-old child murderer would be tried as a minor because he was a minor at the time of the murder. The law provides that a convicted minor does not have to serve prison time after he reaches age 21, so the most that he can spend for murder will be less than one year–if, the trial is over before then. I believe most people would consider murder worse than what Wilson did, unless it was that Nobel Peace prize winner who would said that she would like to kill President Bush, and (presumably) would not give him oral satisfaction.
Woody, a bravura performance! You put it in terms that even this twinkletoestwirlingquasiliberal can understand. You’re also on the dead-to-right Right when you suggest that the Governor could correct this situation, or solve this dilemma, by offering a pardon. Your argument as presented makes perfect sense…. right up to that last sentence. I’m not sure I have the referents to make that one comprehensible. But, likely it’s not a loss in terms of understanding your central thesis. Thank you.
Woody, I think Wilson’s situation is unique because the law has now been changed so that, if he were tried today he would not have been convicted of a felony, but simply a misdemeanor with minimal lock up time and with no sex registry component. So the precedent thang is pretty much a red herring. The Superior Court Judge who ordered Wilson released was simply changing his sentence to match the existing law on the books. Even the lawmaker who introduced the old law in which Wilson found himself caught up, has repeatedly made public statements about this law not being intended for teenagers like Wilson. So it seems that the Judge was simply yanking Wilson out of a legal pothole that developed because of sloppy statute writing.
In other words, no real child predators can possibly use the Wilson decision to get themselves released because it isn’t even vaguely legally analogous.
The new law is specific and applies to only cases from the date of passage forward. It was not retroactive, and a judge cannot make it retroactive or infer that the legislature intended to vacate any convictions prior to passage.
I’m certainly not a lawyer, but it seems logical to me that if you let Wilson out for whatever legal interpretation, then other inmates would be potentially eligible to be let out for the same reason–on this or any unrelated cases for which retroactive application could be claimed.
The video tapes were distributed to the law makers who are considering passing a law to free Wilson.
Who here thinks that these law makers should decide the fate of an individual without knowing the facts of the case or in this case seeing the video?
The people (girls) involved appear to all be over 18 at this time.
If this tape, were being used to free Wilson, many of you might be arguing for its release un-edited to the press.
Woody, I wouldn’t have a problem with someone being released because he/she was locked up by an old law that has since been changed, but that the change didn’t apply retroactively. That’s the point. The legislators who made the law have been very clear about the fact that they intended it for genuine sexual predators not over-hormoned teenagers. They corrected their mistake in the state house, but Wilson is still paying the price for the old BAD law. So a judge rectified that.
We can all agree that Wilson shouldn’t have been sent away for ten years for having oral sex with a classmate, two years his junior. It’s simply nuts. So what’s up with this McDate fool?
Pokey, it’s one thing if it was given to legislators for the purposes you outline (it was, after all, shown to the jury), but once it left the evidence locker for ANY reason, it should have done so ONLY with the girls’ faces blocked out. Period. There’s no possible excuse for the callous disregard for these girl’s well being shown by McDade in handing out the unedited tape. So what if the girls are over 18 now? They were juveniles at the time.
Plus McDade didn’t just give it to legislators and the press, he gave it to anybody who asked, including random members of the public, by his own office’s admission.
He’s a weasel.
Counsel: “He’s a weasel.”
Opposing Counsel: “I object your honor, the counsel is casting aspersions against a cute little mammal that has been turned into a rapscallion in the world press. McDade is far worse than that, in fact, he is very similar to the large, round, brown, smelly patties one finds in a cow pasture.”
Judge: Objection sustained!
Wouldn’t it be VERY IMPORTANT to see the EXPRESSION on girl’s faces when trying to determine the girls their level of participation?
Are you suggesting that their faces should have been blacked out for the JURY as well?
In this case the Legislature is now Wilson’s jury, why would you not give them the same information when deciding the fate of this young man.
If their faces showed eagerness, would that not prove Wilson’s innocence? Would you keep a man imprisoned for years over some privacy issue that only applies women?
“twinkletoestwirlingquasiliberal”
Ha! I’m not the only one who forgets what a space bar is for. 😉
Pokey, of course I wouldn’t recommend they be blacked out for the jury. If the legislature was, in fact, acting as jury (which, at the moment, they aren’t; that would be the state supreme court that has the power at this point), it could be handled as things are always handled with evidence that must, for some reason or another, treated delicately. They could see the thing in a closed door session—or even in an open session, for that matter. But that way possession of the video remains in the hands of officials and doesn’t get broadly disseminated. (I think you’re just quarreling just for quarreling’s sake, right?)
I agree with GM. I’ve been slandering weasels. My abject apologies.
(Note pissed-off weasel rightly taking issue with my wrongful characterization: http://dnr.state.il.us/orc/Wildlife/virtual_news/images/long_tailed_weasel/lt_weasel_frontal.jpg
File this under the category of “bears and alligators and weasels.”
Score: Celeste 3.5, Woody 0.5, Pokey 0, GM 1 for the weasels
As for spacebars, we find common ground where we can, eh?
The U.S. Attorney David Nahmias, said the video “constitutes child pornography under federal law,”; while DA McDade says this was child molestation; and defenders of Wilson say it was consensual high school fun and games.
It seems me this was a pure case of high school fun and games, and for me there are NO victims here except for Wilson and the other young men who are serving time and permanently branded by this travesty of justice
These kids all got drunk, stoned, naked and had sex at a party while being openly videotaped. We have all seen or heard of similar parties in our youth. The 15 year old freshman gave oral sex to 4 or 5 young men that night which was videotaped.
A bipartisan group of legislators introduced a bill in the 2007 Georgia legislative session (S.B. 37) that would allow Wilson’s sentence to be reduced by the courts. This session was adjourned in April, before the bill could be considered. Several legislators have subsequently called for a rare special session of the Legislature to reconsider the bill.
Regarding the video, DA McDade has provided a July 5th letter from the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia backing up his claim to release the video as required by Georgia law.
Hopefully the release of the video tape could will help free Wilson and expunge the brand of child molester from the other young men.
P.S – Love the Weasels
Pokey a video tape of 35 year old man getting a blow job by a 14-15 year old girl would be classified as pronography, consensual or not. It wouldn’t matter if the 14-15 year old girl was drunk, stoned, or of sane mind, and had a parent’s signed permission slip. She is a minor, regardless of the age of the guy getting his “rocks off.” McDade released something, done by a minor, that could have repercussions later. No one can know if the person making the video tape would have eventually released it or not, and it wouldn’t matter. The fact that the prosecuting attorney failed to show due diligience in the handling of a minor’s records, or evidence of the minor’s actions, is all that is needed to hang this cow pie. I’ll leave weasels out of it. Wilson’s age, in this regard, is irrelevant. What matters here is the age (or, the ages) of the young woman (women) involved. I believe the law allows for differential treatment of victims and perps wrt age. It doesn’t matter what Wilson’s status is, the young woman (women) is under age, and her identity ought to be ‘protected’ by law.
I repeat, all the boys were also minors, but they went to jail.
The 15 year old girl who is now 18 and in he Army, was the first one to say this was wrong and I am SURE that she is much more offended by the fact that these boys were prosecuted and one is still in jail than the release of this video.
If as you say this IS child porn, then one would have to assume that you would agree with the prosocution that this was a case of child molestation?
To me this was teenage sex NOT child PORN. Th
You are correct, Pokey. It is teenage sex. And, it is entirely possible that one of the women filmed is more upset at Wilson’s (and, others) incarceration than being caught on film herself. I guess what I should have said was, McDade’s release of the film to anyone who asked, without making an effort to obscure the identities of the women caught on film, was obscene. Or, at least, demonstrated an obscene lack of judgment.
Ppkey, as much as it pains me ( 😉 ) I fully agree with LOTS. My reasoning is simple. In law, and in the courtsystem in all 50 states the identity of a juvenile victim of a sex crime is withheld for obvious reasons. If, as McDade says this was a “crime” (forgive the scare quotes please) then he had a responsibility to protect the identity of the “victims” (again, please forgive the quotes). By displaying those faces, to all and sundry, McDade showed that this was NOT ABOUT CRIME but about influence and how to influence public opinion. Leaving aside the issue of “child porn” (again forgive…) he has a duty to protect those children from the consequences of being exposed. He didn’t, ipso facto, he is a slimeball.