Sentencing Law & Policy (which seems to be having some RSS feed problems for me) has a post discussing the oddities and uncertainties with child pornography sentencing in federal courts:
Regular readers may recall some of my recent posts discussing my observations of an extraordinary amount of variation in charging, bargaining and sentencing realities in federal child porn downloading cases. Two more notable examples came across my desk just today:
In US v. Toothman, No. 07-3729 (8th Cir. Oct. 3, 2008) (available here), a panel rejects an Arkansas defendant's appeal of his within-guidline sentence of more than eight years imprisonment following his plea of guilty to one count of knowing receipt of child pornography. The defendant complained on appeal about the district court's failure to give him any break for his extraordinary physical impairment and extreme susceptibility to abuse in prison, but the circuit court decided the sentence was reasonableness.
Meanwhile, in the neighboring state of Tennessee, another child porn defendant got a significant break from the guidelines, due in part to the luck of timing according to this local artice headlined "Student gets sentence cut in half; Prior defendant’s record worse, so judge shows mercy."
I know that this is your specialty but the more voices the better. I am glad to see Doug pay more attention to this issue over the past year. I normally don't have a problem with a diversity of sentences for similar crimes, so long as there is some basic proportion to them. But sex offender sentences are all over the map; it really is arbitrary.
Posted by: Daniel | October 06, 2008 at 11:57 AM
99% of the country has no idea about mandatory sentencing regarding child porn. This is the most unfair thing I have ever seen in my lifetime, and I am 57.
Posted by: JC | October 24, 2008 at 11:23 PM
I agree with Daniel. I know a really nice guy who got sucked into this and had no idea what kind of sentence he would get. He didn't even realize it was unlawful. Its on the internet right? Why would it be thier so suseptable to anyone? He is a 50 year old First time offender who got 20 years. Squeaky clean record that would do anything for anyone. This is absolutely ridiculuous. A rapist gets 3 years (who actually hurt a child ) a murderer gets 10 and a person playing computer fantasy get 20 or more? I don't get it. And, he only did it for 4 months and then tried to dump it, thats when he got into trouble. Whoever makes these laws needs to rethink them. I would rather someone play fantasy then act out, and there is no proof they want to act on it. Does it say on these sights- warning you will get 20 years to life if you watch this? There are a lot of good people in prison for computer fantasy- what about the people hooked on the very violent games on the internet. Are they too wanting to torture and kill people violently because they are playing a game? I guess there are everyday people out there that know for a fact that anyone that does these things want to act out, even though there is no proof of it. Everyone wants to play God and judge others --least they be judged! Everyone deserves a second chance, Thank God he gave you one!!
Posted by: benjamin5353 | November 17, 2008 at 12:08 AM