Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a Democrat, intends to enter the 2010 race for governor. You might remember Thurbert Baker from the Genarlow Wilson case. In 2007, Baker attempted to block the release of Wilson, who had received a 15-year sentence for aggravated child molestation after engaging in consensual oral sex when he was 17 with a girl two years his junior. A court reduced Wilson's charge to a misdemeanor after Wilson had spent two years in prison and the law under which he had been convicted had been changed to a misdemeanor (although as written it was not meant to apply retroactively). The court ordered Wilson's release, at which point Baker intervened with an appeal to keep Wilson in jail so he could offer him a plea bargain that would have forced Wilson to register as a sex offender. The Supreme Court of Georgia eventually ruled that Wilson's punishment was cruel and unusual, and set him free. The case sparked an outrage at the time, with many people believing that Wilson had been treated harshly because he was black. Wilson reportedly began as part-time student at Morehouse College last year.
According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Baker is planning on running for governor of Georgia on a "tough on crime" platform. Which makes the Genarlow Wilson case what, the most elaborate and cruel Sistah Soulja moment ever conceived?
-- A. Serwer
