On a tip from my sister:

Like Genarlow Wilson, Joshua Widner received a mandatory 10-year sentence for nonforcible sexual activity with a fellow teenager.

Like Wilson, Widner argued through his lawyer at the Supreme Court of Georgia that his sentence was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual.

Widner last year lost in a unanimous decision from the high court, while Wilson last month prevailed in a 4-3 ruling. One key difference between the cases, the court's majority said, was that Widner was about 4 1/2 years older than the 14-year-old girl involved in his case, while Wilson was about two years older than the 15-year-old girl in his case.

But on Monday, a Henry County, Ga., judge signed off on a plea deal that will allow Widner out of prison within days, less than five years into his sentence.

According to the 2006 Supreme Court decision upholding his convictions and sentence, Widner was 18 when he convinced a 14-year-old girl "to agree to have sex with him and another male friend at the same time" in December 2002. Widner engaged in acts of both oral sex and sexual intercourse with the girl, according to that opinion.

Key said last year that Widner and the girl had met at a bar or restaurant in Griffin. The girl snuck out of her house and met Widner at his home on the night of the incident, Key said then. Both Widner and the young woman refused to identify to authorities the other man involved, according to Key.

Floyd said last year that the girl's mother had previously spoken with Widner about leaving her daughter alone -- a conversation Key said his client denied ever occurred -- and was the one who called police to report Widner. The DA's office never made a plea offer before trial, Floyd said Monday.

Another of Widner's lawyers, Mercer University Law assistant professor Sarah L. Gerwig-Moore, said the young woman's parents were "driving the train" in the case. The young girl said all along that she had lied to Widner about her age and didn't want him in jail, said Gerwig-Moore.

But a jury convicted him, and he found no relief at the Georgia Supreme Court. In June 2006, the court issued a unanimous decision shooting down his appeal.

Justice Harold D. Melton's opinion characterized Widner's cruel and unusual punishment argument as asking for "special treatment." It acknowledged that within days a new statute would become the law -- making a person convicted of aggravated child molestation based upon an act of sodomy guilty of only a misdemeanor when the victim is at least 13 but less than 16 years of age and the convicted person is 18 years of age or younger and no more than four years older than the victim. But, wrote Melton, because this revision wouldn't go into effect until after Widner was sentenced, it couldn't help him.

Josh and I were friends when I was in middle school. We went to church together. He has had a rough past (I am not defending anyones actions here, or blaming his past on choices he makes in the present) and hopefully he will be able to turn his life around now.