
Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Jackson responded Tuesday to her past record of taking it easy on child porn offenders during her time serving as a federal judge.
Jackson’s history of leniency against child sex offenders was put on blast last week by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who issued a lengthy Twitter thread dissecting various instances in which Jackson gave lighter sentences to child pornography offenders.
On Monday, Sen. Hawley again laid out his case during the first day of Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearing.
Asked again Tuesday about Hawley’s allegations, the prospective SCOTUS justice argued she went against sentencing guidelines because the statutes were written at a time when huge volumes of child porn weren’t easily accessible over the internet.
BREAKING: Jackson says she gave pedophiles lighter sentences bc its different when they use computers vs mail to get volumes of child porn
This makes ‘total sense’ according to Jackson pic.twitter.com/I1bMFDj2RO
— Jack Posobiec
(@JackPosobiec) March 22, 2022
…The guideline was based originally on a statutory scheme and specific directives by Congress at a time when more serious child porn offenders were identified based on the volume, based on the number of photographs then received in the mail, and that made total sense before when we didn’t have the internet, when we didn’t have distribution, but the way that the guideline is now structured based on that set of circumstances is leading to extreme disparities in the system, because it’s so easy for people to get volumes of this kind of material now by computers. So it’s not doing the work of differentiating who is a more serious offender in the way that it used to.
Jackson went on to claim that in each case she weighed the individual punishments against the respective crimes.
“As a mother and the judge who has had to deal with these cases…I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth,” Jackson said regarding Sen. Hawley’s comments Monday.
“These are some of the most difficult cases that a judge has to deal with. Because we’re talking about pictures of sex abuse of children. We’re talking about graphic descriptions, that judges have to read and consider when they decide how to sentence in these cases.
“And there’s a statute that tells judges what they’re supposed to do. Congress has decided what it is that a judge has to do in this and any other case when they sentence and that statute doesn’t say look only at the guidelines and stop.
“The statute doesn’t say impose about the highest possible penalty for this sickening and egregious crime. The statute says calculate the guidelines, but also look at various aspects of this offense and impose a sentence that is ‘sufficient, but not greater than necessary to promote the purposes of punishment.’
“And in every case, when I am dealing with something like this, it is important to me to make sure that the children’s perspective, the children’s voices are represented in my sentences. And what that means is that for every defendant who comes before me and who suggests, as they often do, that they’re just a ‘looker,’ that these crimes don’t really matter, they’ve collected these things on the internet and it’s fine. I tell them about the victim statements that have come in to me as a judge.
“I tell them about the adults who were former child sex abuse victims who tell me that they will never have a normal adult relationship because of this abuse. I tell them about the ones who say ‘I went into prostitution I fell into drugs because I was trying to suppress the hurt that was done to me as an infant.’
“And the one that was the most telling to me, that I describe at almost every one of these sentencings, when I look in the eyes of a defendant who is weeping because I’m giving him a significant sentence. What I say to him is ‘do you know that there is someone who has written to me and who has told me that she has developed agoraphobia, she cannot leave her house because she thinks that everyone she meets will have seen her … pictures on the internet. They’re out there forever, at the most vulnerable time of her life. And so she’s paralyzed.
“I tell that story to every child porn defendant as a part of my sentencings so that they understand what they have done. I say to them, that there’s only a market for this kind of material because there are lookers, that you are contributing to child sex abuse. And I impose a significant sentence. And all of the additional restraints that are available in the law.
“These people are looking at 20, 30, 40 years of supervision. They can’t use their computers in a normal way for decades. I am imposing all of those constraints because I understand how significant, how damaging, how horrible this crime is.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) bashed Jackson’s defense of her actions on Tuesday, saying, “There is not a voter in the country, let alone a parent that wants a judge that will go easy on child predators.”
Exposed By Josh Hawley: Biden Nominee Caught Protecting Pedophiles And Child Porn Distributors