suboptimal information

Whatever happened to liberty?

Genarlow Wilson has been in prison under a mandatory sentence of 10 years for a “crime” that, because of his case and the unreasonable sentence he received, had its law rewritten down to a misdemeanor by the Georgia state legislature.  But they botched it - they didn’t make the legislative change retroactive and haven’t gotten off their asses to fix that mistake either.

Legal challenges successfully garnered him a writ of habeus corpus and voided sentence, but for some questionably explained reason, the Georgia attorney general decided that while his sentence will probably get reduced, his crime warrants a plea bargain to a lesser sentence, and that the legislature did indeed intend for his sentence to be reduced, the technicality of the court that voided his sentence not having legal standing to void the sentence from the trial court is reason to appeal the voided sentence and keep this guy in prison.  The attorney general stated that this current court does have judicial authority to issue a writ of habeas corpus, just not the authority to void the trial court sentence.  Of course the current court only voided the trial court sentence and didn’t issue a writ of habeas corpus because the voided sentence should have been enough to get this guy out of prison.  Since they didn’t issue the writ, and the attorney general appealed the void order, this poor sap has to stay in prison on a crime that no one feels he should continue to stay in prison for.