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Is there an ivy-leaguer exception to federal child porn charges?

By Douglas A. Berman

This new AP story, headlined "Penn hacker sentenced, avoids child porn charges," has me concerned yet again about extreme sentencing disparities (and perhaps even nefarious discrimination) resulting from how federal prosecutors are exercising their discretion to prosecute child pornography offenses.  Here are the basics as reported by the AP:A federal judge questioned why a white Ivy League student found during a computer hacking probe with thousands of images of child pornography was not charged with that crime, sparing him a decade-long prison sentence that a black convicted child pornographer faced at the same hearing. University of Pennsylvania senior Ryan Goldstein, 22, of Ambler, was sentenced Tuesday to three months in prison and five years of probation for a hacking scheme that caused a Penn engineering school server to crash in 2006...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on October 22, 2008 (boomark / email).