This New York Times story caught my attention and made me wonder how many more judgments like this happen in the U.S.
Does downloading child pornography from the Internet deserve the same criminal punishment as first-degree murder?
A circuit court judge in Florida clearly thinks so: On Thursday, he sentenced Daniel Enrique Guevara Vilca, a 26-year-old stockroom worker whose home computer was found to contain hundreds of pornographic images of children, to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But the severity of the justice meted out to Mr. Vilca, who had no previous criminal record, has led some criminal justice experts to question whether increasingly harsh penalties delivered in cases involving the viewing of pornography really fit the crime. Had Mr. Vilca actually molested a child, they note, he might well have received a lighter sentence.
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Paul Cassell, a former federal judge who is now a law professor at the University of Utah, said there was no question that “consumers of child pornography drive the market for the production of child pornography, and without people to consume this stuff there wouldn’t be nearly as many children being sexually abused.”Mr. Cassell is involved in efforts to get restitution for victims of child pornography, and has filed a petition in one case with the Supreme Court. But he said that while he was not familiar with Mr. Vilca’s case and did not know what other facts might be involved, “in the abstract, a life sentence for the crime of solely possessing child pornography would seem to be excessive.”
“A life sentence is what we give first-degree murderers,” he said, “and possession of child pornography is not the equivalent of first-degree murder.”
