GA Supreme Court Rules Part of Sex Offender Law is Unconstitutionally Cruel and Unusual

We can only hope this bodes well for Wendy Whitaker, the Georgia woman who may lose her home for teenage sex with a classmate.

The AJC:

The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down another provision of the state’s tough sex-offender law, calling mandatory life sentences for offenders who fail to register a second time “grossly disproportionate” punishment.

In a 6-1 decision, written by Justice Robert Benham, the court said the life sentence imposed upon 26-year-old Cedric Bradshaw of Statesboro violates the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

As I wrote at the outset:

The facts of this case are pretty darn sad! Barely more than a child himself at 19, Bradshaw was charged with statutory rape for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. Fine. That’s punishable. I’d prefer it had been kept out of the criminal justice system (see here for more) but it’s punishable. He gets 5 years.

After he gets out, he gives an invalid address. For that, too, he pleads guilty and is sentenced to time served. When released he moves in with his sister but can’t live there because Georgia’s draconian sex offender law won’t let him live within 1,000 feet of a recreation center!

He moves in with an aunt but can’t stay there because the home is within 1,000 feet of the First Baptist Church! Growing desperate, he finds a family friend but this time inadvertently transposes the street address!

[For that error the police investigate.] Bradshaw is arrested because he hadn’t moved into the friend’s single-wide trailer within the legally required 72 hours — and lied and said he did! His mandatory sentence for this infraction is life in prison.

The Daily Report:

When [Bradshaw] challenged the life sentence as cruel and unusual, prosecutors argued that the sentence was not necessarily a life sentence because he was eligible for parole after seven years.

The court majority rejected that argument, Benham wrote, because the parole decision is discretionary.

Tuesday’s decision was notable in that the court majority cited last year’s nationally watched case in which Genarlow Wilson won a 4-3 victory in his challenge to a 10-year sentence for aggravated child molestation stemming from oral sex with a 17-year-old girl.

AP:

Prosecutors said they were following the letter of the law – and by extension, the will of the public. But Bradshaw’s lawyers called the punishment “grossly disproportionate” because the state is the only one that imposes a life sentence for failing to register.

In a strongly written ruling penned by Justice Robert Benham, the court concluded that the penalty is “so harsh in comparison to the crime for which it was imposed that it is unconstitutional.”

It also noted that more violent crimes, such as voluntary manslaughter and aggravated assault, call for lesser punishments than life in prison.