“First they came for the really perverted . . .”
Cf. Are child porn laws unfair? Viewers’ sentences can be worse than molesters’:
Federal offenders in the Western District of Kentucky were sentenced to an average of 10 years in prison from 2006 through last year for downloading and trading child pornography. That was nearly four times longer than offenders in Jefferson Circuit Court got for sexually abusing children, according to Courier-Journal research.
and Sarkozy: Jail those who browse terror websites:
Sarkozy argued that it was time to treat those who browse extremist websites the same way as those who consume child pornography.
“Anyone who regularly consults Internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison,” he told a campaign rally in Strasbourg, in eastern France. “What is possible for pedophiles should be possible for trainee terrorists and their supporters, too.”
and Here’s what a real attack on Internet freedom looks like:
A law limiting Americans’ right to visit hateful websites would not last long in American courts.
and Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No:
The prosecutors who charged Mr. Heicklen said that “advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without constitutional protections no matter where it occurred.”
and EDNY Judge Jack Weinstein’s decision in U.S. v. Polizzi:
Extrapolation of the recently emphasized constitutional principle requiring a jury finding of the facts needed to enhance a sentence requires courts to recognize that colonial and British juries in the late eighteenth century had power to control the finding of guilt in order to affect the sentence. In exercising its extensive discretion, the jury was expected to be aware of and understand the sentence that would follow from its decision. That jury power to know and act may not be eviscerated, as was done in this case by this court’s error in failing to advise the jury of the five-year mandatory minimum sentence required on conviction of receipt of child pornography.
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