During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination for U.S. Supreme Court today, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) focused his questioning on the alarming trend of lenient sentencing in child pornography cases that he first mentioned in a tweet thread last week and his opening comments yesterday.
During his time, Sen. Hawley focused on Judge Jackson’s sentencing decision and comments during one of the seven child pornography cases he was concerned about, United States v. Hawkins, in which Judge Jackson sentenced the offender, age 18, to a significantly lower sentence than what the federal sentencing guidelines and prosecutor had recommended: just three months in prison.