Strong sentencing opinion noting disparities in federal child porn downloading cases
Regular readers know I have blogged a lot about the disparity I keep seeing in the ways in which child porn downloading cases are being prosecuted and sentenced in federal courts. And, thanks to a helpful readers, I just learned about an sentencing opinion issued last month in US v. Stern, No. 5:07-CR-00524 (N.D. Ohio Dec. 17, 2008) (available for download below), that notes this reality while quoting some of my blogging on this topic. Stern is a terrific opinion for lots of reasons, but you can understand my special affinity for these passages toward the end of the opinion:
The Court has carefully considered an extremely wide variety of opinions from across the country as well as the National Guideline Statistics. The Court is deeply troubled by its findings: “anyone seriously concerned about federal sentencing disparities [must begin by] taking a very close look at federal child porn cases.” Professor Douglas A. Berman, Is There an Ivy-Leaguer Exception to Federal Child Porn Charges?(October 22, 2008), on-line at http:// sentencing.typepad.com. Based on the Court’s review of the case law, it is clear that “one would be hard pressed to find a consistent set of principles to explain exactly why some federal child porn defendants face decades in federal prison, some face many years in federal prison, while others only end up facing months.” Id. This Court is “struck by the inconsistency in the way apparently similar cases are charged and sentenced.” Goldberg, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35723, at *5-6 (considering nearly two-dozen cases).
In short, the national sentencing landscape presents a picture of injustice. In the absence of coherent and defensible Guidelines, district courts are left without a meaningful baseline from which they can apply sentencing principles. The resulting vacuum has created a sentencing procedure that sometimes can appear to reflect the policy views of a given court rather than the application of a coherent set of principles to an individual situation. Individual criminal sentences are not the proper forum for an expansive dialogue about the principles of criminal justice. Such conversation, though vital, should not take place here – lives are altered each and every time a district court issues a sentence: this is not a theoretical exercise. Yet, this Court is mindful of the appropriate scope of its authority – it must take the law as it finds it.
The Court, accordingly, has attempted to ensure that its sentence avoids unwarranted sentencing disparities to the greatest degree possible while still hewing to its view that this individual defendant must be punished with a term of imprisonment.
Download Stern child porn sentencing
Some related recent federal child porn prosecution and sentencing posts: