CNN’s Chief Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Tuesday that sentences for child pornography offenders may be too harsh in the age of Internet on “At This Hour with Kate Bolduan.”
Toobin, along with five others, discussed child porn sentencing guidelines in light of senators questioning Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record of sentencing offenders. Toobin argued the guidelines, written in the 1990s, were established at a time where an offender was sentenced based on the number of photos they possessed.
“I just have one point about these kiddie porn cases,” Toobin began. “This came up, I remember, when I was an assistant U.S. Attorney back in the 90’s is when those sentencing guidelines were written for those cases, this was a time when the people who committed these crimes would order individual photos and get them usually through email and they would be sentenced based on the number of photos they possessed.”
“Federal judges have been struggling with the issue of how do you create a fair system that was designed pre-internet, yet you have to sentence people post-internet,” Toobin said. “And what I thought Chairman [Dick] Durbin pointed out is the judges across the country, including Republican-appointed judges, have been saying ‘look, we can’t apply the rules that were designed pre-internet for an internet society and many judges have been giving somewhat less sentences as a result.”
You can’t make this up.
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin is defending the White House/Media narrative on sentencing guidelines for what he calls “kiddie porn cases.”
“People who committed these crimes would order individual photos and get them…through email…this was all pre-internet.” pic.twitter.com/iWMFYOyZ1x
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 22, 2022
Toobin was suspended from CNN in late 2020 for exposing his penis and masturbating during a Zoom call with staffers from the New Yorker and WNYC radio. He soon apologized for the incident calling it “an embarrassingly stupid mistake.” (RELATED: ‘Is He The Victim?’: Sen. Josh Hawley Presses Judge Jackson For ‘Apologizing’ To Child Porn Offender)
He returned to CNN the following June telling his colleague Alisyn Camerota that he thought he had turned off the call. He assured he was not defending himself since the incident was “deeply moronic and indefensible.”
Jackson made a similar defense to her lighter sentencing toward child pornography offenders arguing that judges are changing sentences outside of the mandatory minimum guidelines to adjust to changing circumstances at her Tuesday confirmation hearing. She also argued that judges must consider other aspects of the case to determine a fitting punishment.