by Glib Fortuna @ 9:43 am. Stop the ACLU Blog Burst
I hope he lives that long and is treated, well, like people of his ilk are normally treated in jail.
Don Surber reports: Supreme court OKs 200 years for child porn
Proving not everyone in Washington has lost his mind, justices denied an appeal of a 200-year sentence for a high school teacher who downloaded child porn from 1996 until he was caught in 2002, Reuters reported.
Without any comment, the high court declined to hear the constitutional challenge to the sentence given to Morton Berger, who at the time of his arrest in 2002 was a married, 52-year-old high school teacher with no prior criminal record.
Berger’s lawyers said his lengthy punishment was grossly disproportionate to his crime and exceeded the sentences regularly imposed in Arizona for violent crimes that result in serious injury to the victim.
But child porn is a violent crime. A person rapes a child and photographs it. By downloading child porn, a man becomes an accessory to the crime after the fact. Said Reuters:
Evidence at trial established that Berger possessed numerous videos and photo images of different children, some younger than 10 years old, being subjected to sexual acts with adults and other children.The jury heard testimony that Berger had downloaded child pornography on his computer from 1996 to 2002. He was convicted on 20 separate counts.
The ACLU of Arizona had helped with this appeal. Its press release said:
Cruel & Unusual Punishment (State v. Berger):
ACLU cooperating attorney Don Peters assisted in filing a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider overturning a 200-year sentence that was given to a man who was found to be in possession of child pornography. Morton Berger was charged with 20 separate counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under the age of 15 and sentenced to 20 consecutive 10-year sentences for possession of child pornography.
The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the conviction and rejected the ACLU’s argument that the sentence was excessive and violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The federal Supreme Court rejection of this case comes on the heels of the arrest on Friday of Charles Rust-Tierney, a former president of the ACLU in Virginia, on child porn charges. I posted my thoughts on that on Saturday.
I am all for taking unpopular positions in the defense of liberty. But backing child porn people like Morton Berger is ridiculous. 200 years sounds about right.
Thank God the Arizona Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court have not lost their minds.
