SCOTUS nominee Jackson rejects GOP claims that she gave light sentences to child porn offenders

During the second day of her confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson responded to charges leveled by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that she handed down light sentences to people convicted of child pornography charges. Jackson said, "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."

Video Transcript

DICK DURBIN: Let me address another issue that came up yesterday in the opening phase of this nomination hearing, and it's the issue involving child pornography. I want to turn to that issue because it was raised multiple times, primarily by the senator from Missouri. And it was-- he was questioning your sentencing record in child pornography cases that do not involve the production of pornographic material. They're known as non-production cases.

I wanted to put some context here. The senator from Missouri has in his tweets said of your position on this issue, "Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and a policymaker. She's been advocating it since law school. This goes beyond soft on crime," the senator said. "I'm concerned this is a record that endangers our children."

I thought about his charges as I watched you and your family listening carefully yesterday, and what impact it might have had on you personally to know that your daughters, husband, parents, family, and friends were hearing the charges that your implementation of this law-- sentencing-- endangered children. Could you tell us what was going through your mind at that point?

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Thank you, Senator. 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. 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. Congress has decided what it is that a judge has to do in this and any other case when they sentence.

And that statute, that statute doesn't say, look only at the guidelines and stop. The statute doesn't say, impose the highest possible penalty for this sickening and egregious crime. 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.

And in every case when I am dealing with something like this, it is important to me to make sure that the children's perspective, the children's voices, are represented in my sentencings. And what that means is that for every defendant who comes before me and who suggests, as they often do, that they're just a looker, that these crimes don't really matter, they've collected these things on the internet and it's fine, I tell them about the victim statements that have come in to me as a judge.

I tell them about the adults who were former child sex abuse victims who tell me that they will never have a normal adult relationship because of this abuse. I tell them about the ones who say, I went into prostitution, I fell into drugs because I was trying to suppress the hurt that was done to me as an infant.

And the one that was the most telling to me, that I describe at almost every one of these sentencings 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 cannot 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.

I tell that story to every child porn defendant as a part of my sentencings 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.

These people are looking at 20, 30, 40 years of supervision. They can't use their computers in a normal way for decades. I am imposing all of those constraints because I understand how significant, how damaging, how horrible this crime is.