Florida man gets insanely harsh 100-year sentence for possessing child pornography

While federal judges are rebellling against the harsh penalties recommended by federal sentencing guidelines for possession of child pornography, Florida judges seem to think there is no such thing as a prison term that is too long for this sort of offense. This week Circuit Court Judge Howard Maltz sentenced Jesse Berben, a 36-year-old resident of St. John's County with no prior criminal record, to 100 years in prison for 20 counts of possessing child pornography. That's five years for each count, to be served consecutively. [...]

Berben admitted using file sharing software to download music, but he has consistently denied dowloading the child pornography, saying his computer must have been compromised. According to Berben's lawyer, Tom Cushman, prosecutors offered Berben a plea deal under which he would have served about five years, "but he refused to plead because he said he was not guilty and he wasn't going to plead guilty to something he didn't do and become a registered sex offender with it."

Even if you don't believe Berben's claim of innocence, Maltz imposed a sentence 20 times as long as the one prosecutors were prepared to accept as part of a plea deal and four times as long as the minimum required by law. It is more than three times Florida's maximum penalty for rape, armed robbery, or second-degree murder. If Berben had actually molested a child, he could have easily ended up serving less time than he got for having images of that crime on his computer. As Cushman observed, "That's not justice." [...]

Yet Maltz somehow "see{s} see little difference" between raping children and possessing images of such crimes. That is like saying that someone who watched the 2017 Facebook Live video of four people torturing a mentally disabled teenager is just as guilty as the assailants, or that anyone who sees an ISIS decapitation video is pretty much a terrorist himself. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is a vast moral difference between attacking, abusing, or murdering people and looking at pictures of those acts - even if you enjoy looking at the pictures. Anyone who fails to recognize that difference has no business being a judge.

source: Article 'Florida Man Gets Insanely Harsh 100-Year Sentence for Possessing Child Pornography' by Jacob Sullum; reason.com/blog/2017/04/14/florida-man-gets-100-years-for-possessin; Reason.com; 14 April 2017