Newly revealed transcripts have shed light on controversial child pornography sentences handed down by Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during her time as a US district judge.
At issue are eight child porn cases that Jackson oversaw as a DC district judge between 2013 and 2021, which Senate Republicans seized on in recent hearings to paint the nominee as soft on sex offenders.
The transcripts, described by the New York Post in a report on Saturday, show that Jackson disregarded prosecutors' sentencing recommendations even in some cases involving sickening abuse images of 'infants and toddlers' and in one case apologized to the defendant for handing down prison time.
Jackson in recent hearings said that she had overseen at least 14 cases involving sex offenses against children, and Democrats accuse the GOP of cherry-picking cases to falsely portray President Joe Biden's nominee as soft on pedophiles.
Newly revealed transcripts have shed light on controversial child pornography sentences handed down by Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson
The most infamous of the eight cases in question involves the 2013 sentencing of Wesley Hawkins, who was 18 when he was busted posting videos to YouTube of boys as young as 11 being raped by adult men.
Jackson, citing his young age, sentenced Hawkins to just three months in prison, as opposed to the 24 months recommended by prosecutors.
'I am not persuaded that two years in prison is necessary,' she said at the time, according to the new transcripts, citing Hawkins' 'future potential'.
'This is a truly difficult situation,' she told Hawkins, according to the transcript. 'I appreciate that your family is in the audience. I feel so sorry for them and for you and for the anguish that this has caused all of you.'
Explaining her lenient sentence for Hawkins, Jackson explained that the more than 600 images of child sexual abuse 'don't signal an especially heinous or egregious child pornography offense.'
At recent hearings, Jackson explained that she believes sentencing guidelines in child pornography cases are outdated, because they derive from a time before the internet, when offenders would have to receive each image of child sexual abuse through the mail.
Jackson said the structure of the sentencing guideline is 'not doing the work of differentiating who is a more serious offender in the way that it used to.'
Jackson, citing his young age, sentenced Wesley Hawkins (left) to just three months in prison, while handing Neil Stewart (right) a sentence of 57 months
In another controversial case, Jackson in 2020 sentenced Christopher Michael Downs to 60 months in prison after he was busted distributing images and videos of infants being sexually abused, and boasting of molesting his 13-year-old cousin.
Daniel Jason Savage was sentenced to 60 months after prosecutors recommended 72
Prosecutors had asked for 70 months in prison, but the court's probation office had recommended 60 months.
Transcripts show that Jackson herself admitted that the felon was at 'risk of reoffending'.
However, she declined to enhance his prison time
