Dependable Erection

Thursday, July 12, 2007

A new cause for Nifong bashers?

From the AP:
Prosecutor under fire in teen sex case

David McDade has handed out some 35 copies of a video of teenagers having sex at a party.

McDade is no porno kingpin, but a district attorney. And he says Georgia's open-records law leaves him no choice but to release the footage because it was evidence in one of the state's most turbulent cases — that of Genarlow Wilson, a young man serving 10 years in prison for having oral sex with a girl when they were teenagers.

McDade's actions have opened him up to accusations that he is vindictively misusing his authority to keep Wilson behind bars — and worse, distributing child pornography.

"This has been a ferocious, vindictive prosecution of Genarlow Wilson," said state Sen. Vincent Fort, an Atlanta Democrat. "What is going on is a vendetta."

. . .

Earlier this week, Georgia's chief federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney David Nahmias, said the video "constitutes child pornography under federal law," and he called on McDade's office to stop releasing copies.

"These laws are intended to protect the children depicted in such images from the ongoing victimization of having their sexual activity viewed by others," Nahmias said.

Nahmias' office refused to say whether he would bring criminal charges against the D.A.

Critics say that at the very least, McDade should have obscured the faces of the underage girls to conceal their identity, or sought a protective order to keep the material under seal.

. . .

Several Wilson supporters likened McDade to disgraced Duke lacrosse prosecutor Mike Nifong and called on Georgia's attorney general to investigate.

"Mike Nifong lost his license, and if he lost his license, then certainly a district attorney that distributes child pornography ought to be investigated," the Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said Thursday.

. . .

The law Wilson was convicted of breaking made consensual oral sex between teens a felony. It has since been changed by the Georgia Legislature. But the state's courts have held that the new law cannot be applied retroactively.

A judge last month called Wilson's sentence "a grave miscarriage of justice" and ordered him set free. But prosecutors are trying to block his release. The Georgia Supreme Court is set to hear the case next week.

McDade fought a bill in the Legislature earlier this year that would have helped Wilson. Some lawmakers who were on the fence changed their mind after seeing the tape.



Let's see who, of all of the many groups and individuals who have been working so hard to support the Duke lacrosse players, stands up in this case.

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