U.S. District Judge James S. Gwin of the Northern District of Ohio polled a jury in February about what jurors thought a suitable sentence would be for ____ ____, a child pornography defendant who was found guilty of having 19 videos and 93 still images on his computer.
The jury recommended, on average, a 14-month sentence. Gwin then sentenced ____ to serve five years—longer than the jury recommendation yet significantly shorter than the government’s 20-year recommendation. Full Article
Okay this is a start.
However there needs to be an in depth study into all the content covered under the classification of “child pornography”.
As someone who agreed to plead guilty to possessing child pornography I have a lot of questions that nobody has ever attempted to provide sufficient answers for. Essentially everything always gets reduced back to “because that’s what the law says”. Well okay, but why does the law say what it does, who came to the conclusion that the current legal language was proper, and what research/evidence/data was used to support the text for the proposed laws relating to child pornography?
Accepting things at face value because the face value is just the way things are is not a valid explanation for most things. Rather its a cheap attempt at beating around the bush under the guise of some moral or legal standard that shouldn’t be questioned just because its currently normal and therefore correct. For example the notion that anyone under eighteen who appears in images and/or videos which meet specific, but broadly defined criteria, are victims of child pornography. This includes instances where a sixteen year old is legally allowed to consent to sex, yet by taking a nude selfie and possessing it, has potentially produced and possessed child pornography. Even though its an image of himself or herself there are documented cases where prosecutors claimed the victim a