High School Football Star Behind Bars for Consensual Sex With Another High Schooler

ESPN has the whole, tragic story:

There is a cardboard box in Genarlow Wilson's old bedroom. . . . It's filled with things he needed in his old life. Mostly, it's overflowing with recruiting letters, from schools big and small. A "Good luck on the SAT" postcard from the coaches at Columbia. From another Ivy League college, Brown, a note from the football coach: "You have been recommended to me as one of the top scholar-athletes in your area." . . .

Once, he was the homecoming king at Douglas County High. Now he's Georgia inmate No. 1187055, convicted of aggravated child molestation.

When he was a senior in high school, he received oral sex from a 10th grader. He was 17. She was 15. Everyone, including the girl and the prosecution, agreed she initiated the act. But because of an archaic Georgia law, it was a misdemeanor for teenagers less than three years apart to have sexual intercourse, but a felony for the same kids to have oral sex.

Wilson admits that he was far from perfect, and the hotel party where the so-called felony occurred was far from innocent. Still, he did nothing that deserves a minimum 10-year sentence—nothing that thousands of kids his age haven't done without legal consequences.

If you live in Geogia, contact your legislators and tell them to do something about this injustice.