Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin at the outset of the hearing sought to preemptively head off an array of Republican criticism of Judge Jackson, including the contention that she is lenient on defendants in child-porn possession cases.
Asked by Mr. Durbin to respond to those allegations, the judge said that "nothing could be further from the truth." She said that “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.
The judge said that the law doesn't tell judges to impose the highest possible penalty for the crime. “The statute says, calculate the guidelines, but also look at various aspects of this offense and impose a sentence that is, quote, sufficient but not greater than necessary to promote the purposes of punishment," she said.
She said that for every defendant weeping at their sentence for possessing images of abused children, she told them about adults who are 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.”
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