How desperate can you get? This desperate: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is pushing the argument that Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is dangerously soft on sex offenders, child pornographers in particular.
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“I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children,” Hawley tweeted. “I’m concerned that this [is] a record that endangers our children.”
Right, beware, America: Jackson, mother of two daughters, would be dangerous to your children’s health.
In the cherry-picked, context-free Hawley-verse, Jackson has been lying in wait to foist this child-endangerment scheme on the country since her law school days. Count one is her writing as a student editor on the Harvard Law Review, about sex-offender registries, DNA databanks and civil-commitment laws that states were busy enacting.
In her article, Jackson grappled with the tension between constitutional limits on permissible punishment and the community’s need for self-protection. Given conservatives’ focus on analyzing the text of a law rather than divining lawmakers’ intent, you might have thought that Hawley would cheer Jackson’s argument that in assessing the constitutionality of sex offender laws, “courts have relied too heavily on the legislatures’ intent.” But no.
Instead, Hawley wrenches a few lines out of context. “As far back as her time in law school, Judge Jackson has questioned making convicts register as sex offenders — saying it leads to ‘stigmatization and ostracism.’ ”
Hello, Senator? That is in a section headlined “The Critics” that outlines the views of the statute’s opponents. Hawley might just have easily quoted from the previous section — “commitment legislation literally immobilizes dangerous sexual deviants and, thus, presumably promotes both immediate and long-term public safety.”
It is fair to say that law-student Jackson came to the subject with a perspective sympathetic to civil liberties concerns — referring, for example, to “the current climate of fear, hatred and revenge associated with the release of convicted sex criminals.” It’s out of line to argue, as Hawley does, that Jackson has been “advocating” for “letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes” since law school.
Count two against Jackson is her work on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. “It gets worse,” Hawley tweeted. “As a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Judge Jackson advocated for drastic change in how the law treats sex offenders by eliminating the existing mandatory minimum sentences for child porn.”
This is cleverly phrased. Jackson didn’t argue for eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for child porn. She — and all the other members of the Sentencing Commission, Republican and Democratic — said that the mandatory minimum for receiving child porn should be reviewed, hardly a “drastic change.”
The law distinguishes between possession of child pornography (no mandatory minimum) and receipt of child pornography (five-year minimum). That makes no sense in the current technological universe, in which possession almost always involves receipt, through the Internet.
Consequently, the Sentencing Commission recommended in 2012 “that Congress align the statutory penalties for receipt and possession” of child pornography — and, if it wanted to keep a mandatory minimum, make it less than five years.
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The underlying issue was whether the existing guidelines were unduly stringent given the increasing use of computers to share large numbers of images. Because of changes in technology, four of the six factors that generated longer recommended sentences “are now being applied routinely to most offenders” and consequently result in “overly severe guideline ranges for some offenders.”
The final count against Jackson involves how she, in Hawley’s assessment, “put her troubling views into action. In every single child porn case for which we can find records, Judge Jackson deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders.”
Sounds terrible, right? Except because the guidelines are so outdated and therefore unfair, that’s what judges do in almost every case — 70 percent, according to the latest statistics.
According to data compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, judges imposed below-guidelines sentences in nearly 80 percent of child pornography cases in the District of Columbia, where Jackson was a trial court judge before being elevated to the appeals court. In Missouri, Hawley’s home state, judges imposed sentences below the guidelines in more than 77 percent of cases.
Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing policy at Ohio State University, reviewed Jackson’s sentences in child pornography cases and pronounced them “not at all out of the ordinary.”
Hawley’s attack is part of a broader Republican barrage seeking to portray Jackson as soft on crime (she was a public defender) and supportive of terrorists (she advocated for Guantánamo Bay detainees as a public defender and in private practice). Such representation, of course, is in the finest tradition of American lawyering; its necessity is enshrined in the Constitution.
But now we are reduced to this kind of smarm from the Republican National Committee, recycling Hawley. “A pattern of advocating for terrorists AND child predators,” deputy rapid response director Kyle Martinsen emailed reporters. “What other criminals is Ketanji Brown Jackson an advocate for?”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t stoop quite that low, but close enough: “Her supporters look at her résumé and deduce a special empathy for criminals,” he said.
Funny, I look at her résumé and deduce a special empathy for the Constitution. If only that were more widely shared.
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“I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children,” Hawley tweeted. “I’m concerned that this [is] a record that endangers our children.”
Right, beware, America: Jackson, mother of two daughters, would be dangerous to your children’s health.
In the cherry-picked, context-free Hawley-verse, Jackson has been lying in wait to foist this child-endangerment scheme on the country since her law school days. Count one is her writing as a student editor on the Harvard Law Review, about sex-offender registries, DNA databanks and civil-commitment laws that states were busy enacting.
In her article, Jackson grappled with the tension between constitutional limits on permissible punishment and the community’s need for self-protection. Given conservatives’ focus on analyzing the text of a law rather than divining lawmakers’ intent, you might have thought that Hawley would cheer Jackson’s argument that in assessing the constitutionality of sex offender laws, “courts have relied too heavily on the legislatures’ intent.” But no.
Instead, Hawley wrenches a few lines out of context. “As far back as her time in law school, Judge Jackson has questioned making convicts register as sex offenders — saying it leads to ‘stigmatization and ostracism.’ ”
Hello, Senator? That is in a section headlined “The Critics” that outlines the views of the statute’s opponents. Hawley might just have easily quoted from the previous section — “commitment legislation literally immobilizes dangerous sexual deviants and, thus, presumably promotes both immediate and long-term public safety.”
It is fair to say that law-student Jackson came to the subject with a perspective sympathetic to civil liberties concerns — referring, for example, to “the current climate of fear, hatred and revenge associated with the release of convicted sex criminals.” It’s out of line to argue, as Hawley does, that Jackson has been “advocating” for “letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes” since law school.
Count two against Jackson is her work on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. “It gets worse,” Hawley tweeted. “As a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Judge Jackson advocated for drastic change in how the law treats sex offenders by eliminating the existing mandatory minimum sentences for child porn.”
This is cleverly phrased. Jackson didn’t argue for eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for child porn. She — and all the other members of the Sentencing Commission, Republican and Democratic — said that the mandatory minimum for receiving child porn should be reviewed, hardly a “drastic change.”
The law distinguishes between possession of child pornography (no mandatory minimum) and receipt of child pornography (five-year minimum). That makes no sense in the current technological universe, in which possession almost always involves receipt, through the Internet.
Consequently, the Sentencing Commission recommended in 2012 “that Congress align the statutory penalties for receipt and possession” of child pornography — and, if it wanted to keep a mandatory minimum, make it less than five years.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
The underlying issue was whether the existing guidelines were unduly stringent given the increasing use of computers to share large numbers of images. Because of changes in technology, four of the six factors that generated longer recommended sentences “are now being applied routinely to most offenders” and consequently result in “overly severe guideline ranges for some offenders.”
The final count against Jackson involves how she, in Hawley’s assessment, “put her troubling views into action. In every single child porn case for which we can find records, Judge Jackson deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders.”
Sounds terrible, right? Except because the guidelines are so outdated and therefore unfair, that’s what judges do in almost every case — 70 percent, according to the latest statistics.
According to data compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, judges imposed below-guidelines sentences in nearly 80 percent of child pornography cases in the District of Columbia, where Jackson was a trial court judge before being elevated to the appeals court. In Missouri, Hawley’s home state, judges imposed sentences below the guidelines in more than 77 percent of cases.
Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing policy at Ohio State University, reviewed Jackson’s sentences in child pornography cases and pronounced them “not at all out of the ordinary.”
Hawley’s attack is part of a broader Republican barrage seeking to portray Jackson as soft on crime (she was a public defender) and supportive of terrorists (she advocated for Guantánamo Bay detainees as a public defender and in private practice). Such representation, of course, is in the finest tradition of American lawyering; its necessity is enshrined in the Constitution.
But now we are reduced to this kind of smarm from the Republican National Committee, recycling Hawley. “A pattern of advocating for terrorists AND child predators,” deputy rapid response director Kyle Martinsen emailed reporters. “What other criminals is Ketanji Brown Jackson an advocate for?”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t stoop quite that low, but close enough: “Her supporters look at her résumé and deduce a special empathy for criminals,” he said.
Funny, I look at her résumé and deduce a special empathy for the Constitution. If only that were more widely shared.
