WaPo runs puff piece on pedophile in support of Biden's Supreme Court pick

After Senate Republicans dug into sentencing records for President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during confirmation hearings this week, the Washington Post decided to combat their claims that she was soft on pedophiles by writing a puff piece on one of the child pornographers to whom she had given a light sentence.

The Washington Post tracked down Wesley Hawkins, the man who received a three-month sentence in Jackson's court, and spoke to him about his crimes, the sentence, and his life since those three months in prison. They were sympathetic to him and his struggles by way of defending Jackson's sentencing, which was under intense critique by Senate Republicans, specifically Josh Hawley.

Hawkins was 18-years-old at the time he committed the crime, amassing multiple images of child sex abuse on his computer. The case was the United States v. Hawkins. Senator Josh Hawley questioned Jackson about the case, and the sentence imposed, which was only three months. The prosecutor in the case asked for two years in prison. The federal sentencing guidelines per the Protect Act of 2003 were 97 to 121 months, or up to 10 years.

"I wasn't very happy that she gave me three months," Hawkins said, who had to register as a sex offender for 10 years after the conviction, "though, after reflection when I was in jail, I was hearing from other people who said it was their first time arrested and they got five years, six years."

Hawkins uploaded five videos showing the sex abuse of children to YouTube, and another 36 images to his iCloud account. A police search of his home found another 17 videos on Hawkins' computer and 16 images. "All of them very graphic," Hawley said, "Some of them involving very young children. 17 videos in particular." There were children as young as 8-years-old depicted, as well as pre-teens and teens closer to Hawkins' own age. He had upwards of 600 images and videos in all.

"I feel that she chose to take into consideration the fact that I was just getting started [in life] and she knew this was going to hold me back for years to come regardless, so she didn't really want to add on to that," Hawkins told the Washington Post. Hawkins has struggled with employment and getting started in life since the end of his jail term.

For Jackson, the number of images should not have been a factor in sentencing, though the federal guidelines state expressly that penalties for possession of child pornography should increase with the number of images held. For Jackson, and other judicial minds, those penalties were written when most pornography was analog, and the introduction of digital images meant that every offender had upwards of the maximum number of images as defined by sentencing guidelines. In other words, the law didn't keep up with the technology. But for Hawley and the Senate GOP, the internet facilitating easier access to multiple hundreds of images does not change the rationale behind the sentencing.

The Washington Post detailed the struggles Hawkins has faced since leaving prison, including an incident where he had started down the road to relapse. In 2019, Hawkins "had searched for non-pornographic material and images of males 13-to 16-years-old," WaPo writes, which moved Jackson to send Hawkins to a halfway house. Hawkins said that he did not re-offend, but that he was believed to be "at a high risk of reoffending."

Jackson told Hawkins at sentencing: "Your collection... at the time that you were caught was not actually as large as it seems," and that "this seems to be a case where you were fascinated by sexual images involving what were essentially your peers." Hawley quoted these back to Jackson at the hearing. Hawley noted that Jackson also told Hawkins that she believed he was "trying to satisfy his curiosity" as the images showed children and teens who were "not much younger" than he was at the time. Jackson also said to Hawkins that "there's no reason to think that you are a pedophile." This was per a psychological evaluation done at the time.

"What I recall with respect to that case," Jackson countered, "is that unlike the many other child pornography offenders I'd seen as a judge, and then I was aware of in my work on the Sentencing Commission, this particular defendant had just graduated from high school, and some of, perhaps not all when you were looking at the records, but some of the materials that he was looking at were older teenagers, were older victims. And the point, Senator, is that you said before, the probation office is making recommendations and they do so on a case by case basis. That is what Congress requires..." Jackson said.

Jackson, Hawley noted, felt bad for Hawkins and expressed that at sentencing, saying that she said, "This is a truly difficult situation. I appreciate that. Your family's in the audience. I feel so sorry for them, and for you. And for the anguish, this has caused all of you. I feel terrible about the collateral consequences of this conviction."

"I remember in that particular case," Jackson said, "I considered it to be unusual, in part for the reasons that I described. I remember in that case that defense counsel was arguing for probation, in part, because he argued that here we had a very young man, just graduated from high school. He presented all these diplomas and certificates and the things that he had done and argued, consistent with what I was seeing in the record, that this particular defendant had gotten into this in a way that was I thought inconsistent with some of the other cases that I had seen."

"This, in my view was an unusual case that had a number of factors that the defendant was pointing out, that the government was pointing out, that the probation office was pointing out, and I sent this 18-year-old to three months in federal prison under circumstances that were presented in this case, because I wanted him to understand that what he had done was harmful, that what he had done was unlawful. That what he had done violated the law and needed to be punished not only by prison but also by all of the other things that the law requires of a judge who is sentencing in this area," Jackson said.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on Jackson's nomination on April 4.