As I’m sure you know already, earlier this month President Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s 2.5-year prison sentence on his conviction of perjury and obstruction of justice charges, his friend and Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff. Not surprisingly, this has raised the ire of many liberals who see this as political cronyism but also another example of how race and social class determine justice in this country, especially in comparison to cases like a young Black man serving a ten-year prison sentence for receiving consensual oral sex from a 15 year old:

Genarlow Wilson has been in prison for two years for taking part in the sex act when he was 17 years old. . . . State Rep. Alisha Thomas Morgan said Wilson’s punishment was excessive and should be reduced, just like the prison sentence for former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, which was commuted Monday by President Bush. “Genarlow is the face of many other young black men who have received injustice,” Thomas Morgan said. “Somebody’s got to stand up for them.”

“If he had a different complexion and a different connection, we wouldn’t be here,” Sharpton said. Wilson, now 21, is serving a 10-year mandatory sentence for aggravated child molestation stemming from a 2003 New Year’s Eve Party where he was captured on videotape receiving oral sex from a 15-year-old girl. The law has since been changed by Georgia lawmakers, but the state’s top court said the new law could not be applied retroactively. . . .

On June 11, Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson ruled that Genarlow Wilson should be freed from prison and not listed on Georgia’s sex offender registry. The judge called the 10-year mandatory sentence “a grave miscarriage of justice” that violated the constitution. Attorney General Thurbert Baker immediately appealed that ruling, drawing criticism from civil rights activists. The Georgia Supreme Court is set to hear the latest appeal in October.

I completely agree that, as is too often the case in this country, the contrast between Scooter Libby and Genarlow Wilson shows that if you happen to be White, affluent, and politically well-connected, your chances at avoiding prison for any crime is significantly better than if you are Black and not wealthy. This is not an isolated case -- I can spend hours documenting similar contrasts between how Whites and Blacks are consistently treated differently by the criminal justice system and in fact, there are already scores of books specifically written about this topic.

The bottom line is, there are two criminal justice systems in this country -- one for affluent Whites and another for the rest of us.