By Emily Mangiaracina
Article Source
Details of eight child porn cases recently acquired by the New York Post show that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was openly sympathetic to distributors of child porn, leading her to give the “lightest possible punishments in each case,” the Post noted, even when the porn involved depicted child rape and sadomasochistic bondage of children, including of “infants and toddlers.”
Jackson’s refusal to acknowledge the atrocious nature of child pornographers’ crimes is highlighted by the case of child porn distributor Ryan Manning Cooper, sentenced in April 2021. Prosecutors described his crimes, which involved possession of a video of a “pre-pubescent boy being penetrated anally and orally” by an older male, as well as the trade of sexually explicit pics depicting bondage of infants and toddlers, as “on the more egregious or extreme spectrum” of child porn,” according to hearing transcripts.
Jackson, however, offered an entirely different assessment: “I don’t find persuasive the government’s arguments concerning why they think that this is a particularly egregious child pornography offense, which means I struggled to find a good reason to impose a sentence that is more severe in this case,” she explained, according to the New York Post’s transcripts.
Jackson claimed that “mitigating factors” included letters sent to her by family members describing Cooper as “kind, hard-working, dependable, loving,” adding, “I have no reason to doubt those representations.”
In another child porn case that Jackson argued was not “especially heinous,” a “young, gay black man,” Wesley Keith Hawkins, was convicted in 2013 for crimes including “posting videos on YouTube of boys as young as 11 being raped by men.” Arguing that mitigating factors were present, such as his “youth and inexperience,” and his “future potential,” Jackson gave him a mere three months in prison instead of the two years prosecutors had sought.
“I am not persuaded that two years in prison is necessary,” she stated. She appeared to lament the possibility of Hawkins being ostracized, adding the she felt “terrible about the collateral consequences of this conviction,” explaining that “sex offenders are truly shunned in our society, but I have no control over the collateral consequences.”
In fact, further child porn crimes were committed by Hawkins after his release, after Jackson’s sentencing claim, “There’s no reason to believe you are a pedophile or that you pose any risk to children. So It’s not necessary to incapacitate you in order to protect the public.”
In 2019, Hawkins was caught by his probation officer with child porn, and Jackson was forced to “essentially re-sentence him, this time to six months in a ‘residential reentry center,’ according to her court filing,” the New York Post reported.
The Post further pointed out that when Jackson was “asked about Hawkins’ relapse at her Senate hearing, she testified she could not recall the matter. But transcripts show that in her May 2021 sentencing of Adam Chazin, who was busted with 48 files of child porn including images of toddlers, she said ‘I remember Mr. Hawkin’s case well, even though it was many years ago.’”
Jackson’s lenient treatment of child porn offenders aligns with her expressed belief that federal sentencing guidelines for child porn are “outdated” and “too severe.” Remarkably, the Post reported, “experts” have pointed out that when she said that “policy disagreement with the guidelines” has led her to develop her “own analysis of child pornography offenses,” she was referring to “criticism she herself wrote years earlier as President Obama’s vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.”
According to Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project (A3P), which “defends constitutional judges and the rule of law,” Jackson “served as the tip of the spear in weakening federal sentencing policy for child pornographers as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, where she ignored the advice of expert witnesses who disputed her theory that child pornographers are somehow not pedophiles.”
Jackson substantially reduced the recommended sentencing even in the case of a child porngrapher, Neil Alexander Stewart, who advised an undercover officer how to groom his supposed 9-year-old daughter to have sexual intercourse so that they could videotape it.
Ignoring prosecutors’ warning that Stewart posed a “continuing” threat for “hands-on” sexual abuse of children, Jackson sentenced him to 57 months in jail, well under the prosecutors’ request of 97 months.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri pointed out during Jackson’s confirmation hearing that warrants had since been issued for Stewart’s arrest, “just three years after” Jackson’s sentencing.
“Would it surprise you to learn that Mr. Stewart is a recidivist?” Hawley asked Jackson. She replied, “You know, Senator, there is data in the Sentencing Commission and elsewhere that indicates that there are serious recidivism issues. And so among the various people that I’ve sentenced, I’m not surprised that there are people who re-offend, and it is a terrible thing that happens in our system.”
Commenting on her “alarming pattern” of “letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes,” Hawley wrote on Twitter, “I’m concerned that this is a record that endangers our children.”
Jackson has also been castigated by conservatives for saying she does not know when life begins, for claiming she could not define what a woman is, and for testifying that she does “not hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights.”
Calvin Freiburger has remarked that, with all of this considered, Jackson has “given the Senate all they need to reject her Supreme Court nomination.”
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Monday vote on whether to confirm Jackson as Supreme Court Justice ended with an 11-11 party-line deadlock, likely pushing the final vote to Thursday.