In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called out President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, for having “a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes.”

Detailing Judge Jackson’s rulings, interviews, articles, and speeches, Hawley called attention to the “alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children.”

“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,’” Hawley noted. “She’s suggested public policy is driven by a ‘climate of fear, hatred & revenge’ against sex offenders.”

Hawley cited a few cases as examples of her leniency towards the sentencing of child porn sex offenders.

“In United States v. Cooper, in which the criminal had more than 600 images and videos and posted many on a public blog, the Guidelines called for a sentence of 151-188 months. Judge Jackson settled on 60 months, the lowest possible sentence allowed by law,” Hawley tweeted.

“In United States v. Downs, the perp posted multiple images to an anonymous instant messaging app, including an image of a child under the age of 5. The Guidelines recommended 70-87 months. Judge Jackson gave him the lowest sentence allowed by law, 60 months,” he said in another tweet.

Hawley called Jackson’s record “disturbing,” and added, “sending child predators to jail shouldn’t be controversial.”

“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,” Hawley wrote.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson

8 Known Connections

Lamenting the Excessively Harsh Treatment of Sex Offenders

In 1996, Jackson anonymously wrote a “Note” for the Harvard Law Review in which she: (a) claimed that U.S. courts tended to treat convicted sex offenders too harshly, and (b) urged judges to “change their analytical framework for evaluating the constitutionality of certain state sex offender statutes.” “[I]n the current climate of fear, hatred, and revenge associated with the release of convicted sex criminals,” Jackson wrote, “courts must be especially atten­tive to legislative enactments that ‘use[ ] public health and safety rhetoric to justify procedures that are, in essence, punishment and detention.’” Arguing that the laws regarding punishment for sex crimes were excessively onerous, she added: “Although many courts and commentators herald these laws as valid regulatory measures, others reject them as punitive enactments that violate the rights of individuals who already have been sanctioned for their crimes.”

To learn more about Ketanji Brown Jackson, click here.

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