In his questioning, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill, criticized attacks from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who accused Jackson Monday of a “long record” of letting child porn offenders “off the hook” in sentencing. Noting that several independent fact-checkers, including ABC News, have found the claims misleading, Durbin gave Jackson a chance to respond by asking what was going through her mind when Hawley leveled that criticism Monday.
“As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth,” Jackson said, taking a tough tone. “These are some of the most difficult cases that a judge has to deal with because we’re talking about pictures of sex abuse of children. We’re talking about graphic descriptions that judges have to read and consider when they decide how to sentence in these cases, and there’s a statute that tells judges what they’re supposed to do.”
She noted that federal sentencing laws are set by Congress, and the statute says, “Calculate the guidelines, but also look at various aspects of this offense, and impose a sentence that is, quote, sufficient but not greater than necessary to promote the purposes of punishment,” she said.
Calling the crimes “sickening and egregious,” Jackson went on to recall a story she said she tells every child porn defendant “when I look in the eyes of a defendant who is weeping because I’m giving him a significant sentence.”
“What I say to him is, ‘Do you know that there is someone who has written to me and who has told me that she has developed agoraphobia? She can not leave her house because she thinks that everyone she meets will have seen her, will have seen her pictures on the internet. They’re out there forever. At the most vulnerable time of her life, and so she’s paralyzed,” she said.
“I tell that story to every child porn defendant, as a part of my sentencing, so that they understand what they have done. I say to them that there’s only a market for this kind of material because there are lookers. That you are contributing to child sex abuse. And then I impose a significant sentence, and all of the additional restraints that are available in the law,” she continued in an emotional riff. “I am imposing all of those constraints because I understand how significant, how damaging, how horrible this crime is.”
Jackson noted that in addition to prison terms of many years for the crimes, she also requires “20, 30, 40 years of supervision” and that the offenders “can’t use computers for decades.”