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"Is it possible to feel sympathy in a child porn case?"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this interesting commentary piece in the St. Louis Post Dispatch about an older defendant sentenced to 90 month in federal prison because of downloading child porn.  Here is a interesting snippet: [P]eople who view this stuff generally get more time than the people who molest children.  That's because in a child-molestation case, the witness is the child, and most parents are reluctant to put the child through the additional trauma of a trial.  So if there is a plea agreement, the advantage is to the defense.  In a child porn case, the images themselves are the evidence, and no defendant wants the jury to see this stuff.  The advantage is to the prosecution, and the resultant plea agreements reflect the draconian nature of the laws...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 16, 2009 (boomark / email).