A trio of representatives for the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary pushed back Thursday against a Republican lawmaker’s claims that the Supreme Court nominee’s sentencing record on child pornographers “endangers children.”
Tapped by President Joe Biden to succeed retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, several Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson this week over an apparent “pattern” of sentencing child sex offenders below the guidelines of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley was the first to claim Jackson’s record presented concerns last week.
“So, one of the senators on the other side actually tweeted that they felt that her sentencing in these child pornography cases and sexual abuse cases ‘endanger children,'” said committee Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “Those were his exact words, ‘endanger children.’ What I’m asking you is would that have come out?”
HAWLEY TAKES JACKSON TO TASK ON LENIENT CHILD PORN SENTENCING
In response, Joseph Drayton of the ABA said of the 250 professionals and judges that were interviewed over their experience working with Jackson, “We did not find any evidence of that.”
“To the extent that a prosecutor or defense counsel who appeared before in those types of cases felt that way, it would have come out in our interviews, we have a confidential interview process that allows us to really have transparent communications with the folks that appear before nominees,” Drayton added.
But Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn pushed back on Drayton’s response. “You did not review all of Judge Jackson’s sentencing memoranda, only a portion. Is that correct?” Cornyn asked.
Ann Claire Williams, another representative for the ABA and a retired judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, said it was “highly confidential” due to the rights of the individual defendant.
“We could not review the pre-sentence report,” Williams said. “Secondly, there were not transcripts of all the hearings. You know, if we had a transcript of the hearing, we could review that. But there are memos filed. Those are public, what the position the prosecution takes, the position the defense takes. That is available in a public record and the dockets are there. So, we did as much as we could.”
During the past two days of questions, Hawley hammered on Jackson to explain her reasoning to sentence an 18-year-old child pornography offender to three months in jail in the 2013 case United States v. Hawkins, when the prosecution recommended at least two years in prison.
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In her response to Hawley on Tuesday, Jackson argued a 2003 Supreme Court ruling, United States v. Booker, signed by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, which determined that the sentencing guidelines that Congress wanted to be mandatory would be made advisory and ultimately up to a judge’s discretion.
The White House previously dismissed Hawley’s claims as cherry-picked when they were brought up last week, and Durbin chimed in to say, “Congress doesn’t have clean hands in this conversation,” arguing future legislation is in order to resolve a challenge that many judges face in related cases involving child sex offenders.
