(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) During her successful confirmation hearing for a seat on the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was questioned extensively about her lenient sentencing for child porn offenders.
Her supporters and like-minded leftist legal activists denounced any criticism as misguided, while demanding radical so-called criminal justice reform.
It should come as no surprise, in that light, that one of Jackson’s most vocal and ardent supporters was tapped to moderate a panel discussion on the pros of abolishing the sex offender registry.
Georgetown Law professor Abbe Smith, who once declared that criminal prosecutors can’t be good people because they “cannot overcome the racially and socially unjust context in which they work,” sang high praises for Jackson during the confirmation process, extolling the judge’s penchant for slashing sentencing guidelines for child porn offenders.
Smith said that “she hopes to see Jackson respond with a full-throated defense of her work if she’s confronted during the confirmation process and that it would only be the beginning of her advocacy,” reported The Hill.
“I think the U.S. Supreme Court is a kind of bully pulpit and can have enormous impact on the way judges in our states and localities rule in criminal cases,” Smith said.
One impact, apparently, would be to help abolish something as “racially and socially unjust” as a sex offender registry.
The panel discussion led by the KBJ-cheerleader is meant to illuminate “the harms of the registry on people who have committed sex offenses, their families, and their communities, as well as address common critiques of the movement to end the registry.”
That mission aligns with Jackson’s past social-justice crusades, where “as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Judge Jackson advocated for drastic change in how the law treats sex offenders by eliminating the existing mandatory minimum sentences for child porn.”
Some of her other dubious decisions, as noted by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., during Jackson’s confirmation hearing, included reducing from 10 years to three months the sentence of a convicted sex offender caught with multiple images of child porn.
“I hope that Ketanji Brown Jackson uses her experience and her wisdom and the power that she will have as a United States Supreme Court Justice to speak the truth about how our criminal legal system has affected individuals, their families, their loved ones and communities,” Smith said in support of Jackson.
“Even in dissent, you can have an impact.”
Child porn peddlers and sex offenders are likely hoping that proves to be the case.
