ATLANTA (Reuters):

Georgia's top court ordered the release yesterday of a youth sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl in a case that sparked a national campaign on his behalf.

In a split decision, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the ruling of a lower court judge that the sentence for Genarlow Wilson, who was 17 at the time, constituted "cruel and unusual punishment" banned under the United States Constitution.

"Although society has a significant interest in protecting children from premature sexual activity, we must acknowledge that Wilson's crime does not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children," Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in a 4-3 majority opinion.

"For the law to punish Wilson as it would an adult, with the extraordinarily harsh punishment of 10 years in prison without the possibility of probation or parole, appears to be grossly disproportionate to his crime," the opinion said.

Wilson was convicted in 2005 of aggravated child molestation after he had oral sex at a New Year's Eve party in a hotel in Georgia. The act was captured on an amateur video.

Law changed

He was sentenced to a mandatory 10 years in prison without parole. But in 2006, the law was changed to make a crime such as Wilson's a misdemeanour punishable with a maximum one-year sentence and no entry into the child sex registry.

Georgia's attorney-general, Thurbert Baker, who challenged the lower court's ruling in June and, thus, kept Wilson in jail, said he accepted yesterday's decision.

"I hope the court's decision will ... put an end to this issue as a matter of contention in the hearts and minds of concerned Georgians and others across the country who have taken such a strong interest," Baker said in a statement.