Justices to look at child porn
It’s hard to resist a provocative headline upon learning, from this SCOTUSblog post, that the Supreme has granted cert in US v. Williams (06-694), a case concerning “the constitutionality of a 2003 law passed by Congress to criminalize distribution of child pornographic materials.” I do not know if there is a sentencing angle in Williams, but I suspect the buzz around this new SCOTUS case could impact debates over severe sentences for simply downloading child porn (such as the 200-year prison sentence given to former Phoenix high school teacher Morton Berger discussed here and here.)
Some possibly related posts:
- Arizona Supreme Court upholds 200-year sentence for possessing child porn
- What ever happened to state constitutional law, textualism, and libertarianism?
- More on the cert denied in Berger
- Intriguing child porn guideline ruling from Ninth Circuit
- On severe sex offender sentences
- Liberty versus security in the war on … sex offenders
UPDATE: SCOTUSblog now has this further account of the child porn cert grant:
The case on pornography is U.S. v. Williams (06-694; cert. petition, reply). It involves the validity of the 2003 “PROTECT Act” that Congress passed to try to shore up federal controls on child porn after the Supreme Court struck down a 1996 federal law on the subject in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002). The PROTECT Act is separate from the law struck down last week by a federal judge in Philadelphia, involving a federal law that solely targets Internet distribution of sexually explicit materials in order to protect children with access to computers and other online devices.