200 Year Sentence For Possession of Porn Stands

.

Court: 200-year child porn sentence stands WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) --

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to rule whether a 200-year prison sentence for an Arizona man convicted of possessing child pornography is excessive.

Morton Berger, 57, appealed Arizona state law that stipulates the maximum sentence of 10 years for each of his 20 convictions must be served consecutively, rather than concurrently, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The former high school teacher's credit card number was found in the records of a child pornography Web site and police found images stored on his computer.

In his appeal to the high court, Berger's lawyers claimed the consecutive terms were unconstitutional.

"If this court reviews Berger's entire punishment instead of examining the sentence for a single count, it would find Berger's punishment cruel, unusual and unconstitutional," the legal brief said.

Earlier, the Arizona Supreme Court also refused to hear the case, saying with only one dissenting note the sentence of 10 years for possessing a single pornographic image was not excessive or disproportionate.

.................................

Dear Harry

My country continues to amaze, sicken, and bewilder me, almost on a daily basis. Unbelievable. Appalling. Horrible. I'm just beside myself with rage and disbelief. No matter how disturbed one is by this guy's behavior, how can any sensible, reasonable, fair, mature person support a sentence of 200 yrs in prison, with no possibility of parole or early release (essentially a death sentence in all but name), for possession of 20 child porn images?! POSSESSION. TWENTY. IMAGES. The guy didn't abuse the children; he didn't produce the images; he didn't distribute them to others; he didn't profit off them; he didn't have thousands of images and videos in his possession; he wasn't running a kiddie porn business and supervising the abuse of children. He also had no prior criminal record. And he's been given a death sentence for having twenty images of kids engaged in sexual activity. That's not justice, that's cruel and inhumane torture. Why didn't they just make child porn possession subject to the death penalty? It would have been more humane than the law they actually implemented. So let me see if I have this right--the Supreme Court would have overturned a law implementing the death penalty for this crime as cruel and unusual punishment, but they upheld THIS?! Apparently de facto torture and a de facto death sentence for looking at pictures is not cruel and unusual punishment. Wow. The witch hunt hysteria and moral panic about sexual offenses in this country has to be approaching critical mass, if it's not there already. How long will it take, how many lives have to be needlessly destroyed, before the public realizes that things have gone way too far and there's a backlash? We really, truly are insane in America. Let there be no doubt. INSANE. And barbaric. We insult the meaning of the word to call ourselves civilized. Good grief, I need a cold compress now!

G


.