Republican senators criticizing Judge Ketanji Jackson for her approach to sentencing child sex abuse defendants have focused on one 2013 case in which they allege she was inappropriately lenient with a teenager who pleaded guilty.
Here is what happened in this United States v. Hawkins case:
A high school student downloaded pornographic images and was arrested.
In 2012, Wesley Hawkins, an 18-year-old then in high school, began downloading pornographic images from the Internet and, according to his lawyer, felt “more confused and shocked than aroused.”
A gay boy from a religious family that strongly disapproved of homosexuality, Mr. Hawkins was driven by a kind of curiosity about the images, and his association with the people in them seemed, in the words of his lawyer, more “identifying” than connected. “exploit them sexually.”
However, many of the images were extremely disturbing, showing young boys engaging in a variety of sexual acts, some of them violent. When Mr. Hawkins posted some of the images on YouTube, law enforcement officers received a “cyber-tip” about him, and soon a police detective posing as a fellow child pornography collector contacted him via email and offered to exchange images.
Prosecutors say Mr Hawkins eventually exchanged photos with the undercover detective, sending some files and requesting others that he believed belonged to the detective’s 12-year-old daughter.
Mr. Hawkins was arrested in June 2013 and prosecutors said he immediately cooperated and “took full responsibility for his actions.”
Mr Hawkins pleaded guilty and expressed remorse.
In September of that year, Mr. Hawkins pleaded guilty to downloading and selling numerous images and films containing child pornography, several of which showed boys under the age of 13.
After the announcement, the case moved towards sentencing. In documents presented to Judge Jackson, Mr. Hawkins’ attorney, Jonathan Jeffress, argued that his client showed “no interest” in the undercover detective’s repeated speculation of an actual sexual encounter.
Mr. Jeffress also provided a psychologist’s assessment stating that Mr. Hawkins did not “demonstrate a sexual deviance” but instead was forced to watch pornographic images as “a way for him to explore his curiosity about homosexual activity and communicate with his emotional peers. “.
Prosecutors, in their own letter to Judge Jackson, said they had reviewed the psychologist’s report and, while they disagreed with everything in it, believed it provided “useful information” about Mr. Hawkins’ “personal circumstances, marital status and stage of development.” ”
Mr. Hawkins wrote Judge Jackson a short letter saying how much he regretted what he had done.
“I have disappointed everyone in my family and everyone who has ever cared for me,” he wrote. “I hope that I can correct my mistakes and that this does not end my life before it begins. I swear that I will never do this again and will not commit any crime in my life.”
Prosecutors asked for two years in prison, calling the case “unique.”
The verdict was handed down in November 2013.
The prosecution asked Judge Jackson to sentence Mr. Hawkins to two years in prison, arguing that his possession of the material was “highly troubling and deserves to be punished.”
Mr. Hawkins’ lawyer asked for one day in jail. He claimed that his client was young, remorseful, and suffering from “incipient mental illness.”
Both sides told Judge Jackson that previous cases supported their arguments, and all agreed that the case was complex and featured what the prosecutor called “unique circumstances”.
The prosecution cited cases in which at least two men who obtained child pornography from online chat rooms or from an undercover officer were sentenced to a full year in prison. The defense pointed to cases of men who had larger collections of illegal material than Mr Hawkins, but did not serve any prison time at all.
Judge Jackson sentenced him to three months in prison, followed by a six-year supervised release.
Ultimately, Judge Jackson—then in her first year on federal trial in Washington—sentenced Hawkins to three months in prison and then six years of supervised release.
In making the decision — “a really difficult situation,” as she put it at the time — Judge Jackson issued a more lenient sentence than those recommended by both the probation department and non-binding federal regulations.
She also believed the defense’s claim that Mr. Hawkins should not be considered a pedophile because he was fairly close in age to the children depicted in his images.
While she acknowledged that Mr. Hawkins’ crimes were “serious” and “heinous,” she also said his case was not as troubling as others she had come across.
“I don’t believe that you are similar in your intentions or as guilty as some depraved old people,” she said.
A relatively lenient sentence was not unusual in child pornography cases, especially for defendants who own such material but are not involved in its creation. The decision was also in line with similar cases in the Federal District Court in Washington, where older defendants with large collections of child pornography were not serving prison sentences at all.
Judge Jackson told Mr. Hawkins that the children in the photographs he owned were forced to do “unspeakable deeds” for the “pleasure of sick people all over the world.” Some of them, she added, will never have “normal adult relationships” while others may turn to drugs or vices “to deal with pain emotionally.”
But Judge Jackson noted that Mr. Hawkins had never produced any pornographic material himself and that he had watched such material for less than a year. He was also young, repentant, and had the rest of his life ahead of him.
“It’s a tragedy that you let your curiosity put it all in jeopardy,” she said.