ATLANTA (AP) – Georgia’s Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear the state’s arguments for keeping in prison a man who had consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. The attorney general later said his release could open the floodgates for hundreds of incarcerated child molesters looking for a way out.

Attorney General Thurbert Baker has caught heat for appealing a state judge’s decision to void Genarlow Wilson’s 10-year sentence but said at a news conference Thursday that he has no choice under the law. The state Superior Court had no authority to reduce or modify the trial court’s sentence, he said.

Baker called the sentence “harsh” but added: “It looms much larger than just this Genarlow Wilson case, and we have to keep that in mind.”

The court said it would hear the case in October.

Wilson, now 21, has served more than 28 months in prison. A jury convicted him in 2005 of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with the girl during a 2003 party. Although the sex was consensual, it was illegal under Georgia law.

Wilson also was charged with rape for being one of several male partygoers to have sex with another 17-year-old girl, but he was acquitted. The party was captured on videotape. The other male partygoers took plea deals.

Wilson’s lawyer will seek to get Wilson released on bond at a July 5 hearing. Baker said he would not oppose bond while the appeal moves forward.

As black leaders called Thursday for the state to drop its effort to keep Wilson in prison and planned an evening rally – Wilson and the girl are black – Gov. Sonny Perdue suggested the controversy is casting Georgia “in an unfair light.”

Treating Wilson differently from the other young men in the case might be unfair, he said.

“How would they be treated fairly if this issue regarding the Wilson young man is adjudicated differently? What is our responsibility to them?” Perdue asked. He called it “a very difficult situation.”

At an afternoon news conference, The Rev. Joseph Lowery, president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said: “It is abuse of power by keeping this young man in prison when everybody knows he should be out.”

A 6 p.m. rally was planned outside the state Capitol in Atlanta.

In Washington, members of the Congressional Black Caucus criticized Wilson’s sentence as “abusive and excessive” and accused Baker of seeking to “perpetuate the injustice.”

“This case represents yet another tragic breakdown in the criminal justice system that, unfortunately, fails young African American males too often,” the group wrote in a statement. “It is unjust, unfair and un-American.”

If Wilson had had sexual intercourse with the teen, he would have fallen under Georgia’s “Romeo and Juliet” exception. But under the law in 2003, oral sex for teens still constituted aggravated child molestation and carried a mandatory sentence, plus listing on the sex offender registry.

Lawmakers last year voted to close that loophole. But the state Supreme Court said the new law could not be applied retroactively to Wilson’s case.

Also Thursday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the 15-year-old girl’s mother said Wilson should not have been criminally charged but changed her statement a day later after a visit from prosecutors.

B.J. Bernstein, a lawyer for Wilson, called the prosecution’s visit “pure intimidation.”

The mother’s interview made clear that the encounter “was definitely a consensual act,” Bernstein said.

The day after that interview, the mother spoke to the newspaper again, saying she was worried that she might be misquoted. She said Douglas County Assistant District Attorney Eddie Barker was at her home with an audio recorder to discuss what she had said.

Douglas County District Attorney David McDade later disclosed that his office had taped the woman’s second conversation, the newspaper reported.

Messages left Thursday with McDade’s office seeking further comment were not immediately returned.

Barker, the assistant district attorney, told the paper: “Never once did she ever ask us not to prosecute this case.”

The AP is not naming the mother to protect the identity of the girl, who is considered a sex crime victim.