As is often the case, the unstoppable Professor Berman beat me to the punch on this strange story:
Mesa jurors found a defendant guilty on nine counts of child pornography charges, setting him up for a potential 90-year sentence under Arizona's tough dangerous crimes against children law.
But the Maricopa County Attorney's office urged a Superior Court judge to drop five counts, leading to a 40-year sentence on Oct. 5 against Todd Robert Laughlin, 46, who was convicted of possessing three movies and six computer images depicting children performing sex acts.
A motion filed by prosecutor Ronald M. DeBrigida Jr. noted that jurors found Laughlin guilty of all nine counts Aug. 21, but asked Judge Helene Abrams to dismiss five counts, saying that it was "in the interests of justice" but offering no further explanation....
"Upon further review of the facts in this case, I concluded that the mandatory 90-year sentence facing the defendant was disproportionate to the offenses he was convicted of," Thomas' statement said. "As a result, our office exercised its prosecutorial discretion in dismissing five of the criminal counts, so that the mandatory sentence now will be 40 years in prison."
The conduct of the prosecutor is pretty odd after a jury verdict. Arizona has very harsh child pornography laws, but it is unusual to see a prosecutor exercise discretion to drop counts after a defendant has been convicted of those counts. The outcome here as well as the well-publicized Berger case show that the Arizona legislature might want to rethink its mandatory minimums for child pornography.
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