What's Peachtree City have to do with anything? The kid is from Douglasville, which is 20 miles west of Atlanta and nowhere near Peachtree City.

This basically happened because of a quirk in Georgia law. Intercourse between underage teens was a misdemeanor while oral sex was a felony. The jury dismissed a rape charge thinking they were convicting him on the lesser of the two charges - aggravated child molestation. As the original article says about the sentence:

Indeed, when the jurors found out there was a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence, several were incensed.

Now, whether he should have been convicted at all is another question and I have no idea whether race played into that. Supposedly the girl initiated all this and where were this drunken 15-year-old's parents? All things considered, seems there should be a huge pair of quotes around "victim" in her case.