Ketanji Brown Jackson Wanted to Empty Jails at Start of Pandemic

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said in the early days of the pandemic it would be "reasonable" to release "each and every" person in District of Columbia jails, and she went on to grant COVID-related releases to defendants and inmates implicated in serious crimes.

In the early days of the pandemic, Judge Jackson made a passionate appeal on behalf of inmates in Washington, D.C., jails and said pandemic conditions could justify releasing them.

"The obvious increased risk of harm that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to individuals who have been detained in the District’s correctional facilities reasonably suggests that each and every criminal defendant who is currently in D.C. DOC custody—and who thus cannot take independent measures to control their own hygiene and distance themselves from others—should be released," she wrote. She went on to urge Congress to take action to help.

In one instance, Jackson granted pretrial release to a defendant allegedly involved in a deadly fentanyl-trafficking ring, requiring only that he comply with a 10 p.m. curfew. In another case, she released an inmate with multiple bank robbery convictions. Prosecutors opposed both moves.

COVID outbreaks were common in prisons across the country and prompted authorities to reduce jail populations to slow transmission. As of this writing, 292 inmates have died of COVID out of 135,000 in the federal system—less than one quarter of one percent—according to the Bureau of Prisons. Some researchers suggest this move contributed to the late spike in violent crime.

Republican opposition to Jackson during her confirmation hearing was pinned to her lenient sentencing, particularly to individuals convicted on charges related to child pornography. In many cases, she imposed sentences far below sentencing guidelines and the recommendations of prosecutors. Her call to release dangerous criminals back onto the streets due to the pandemic could further those concerns.

Jackson made the remark on COVID releases in the course of denying a request for release from a defendant named Sean Ray Wiggins, a high-level heroin dealer. But her pro-inmate appeal was the opening passage of the decision, apparently serving as the frame for all that followed. And she urged Congress to take steps to facilitate release of inmates.

"It is crystal clear that the dangers of the moment call for more systematic action than a judge can grant in any...

Morning Mistress

The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #978

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The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1678

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside? 

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific, 

from the beautiful to the repugnant, 

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed, 

you could be inspired, you could be appalled. 

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. 

You have been warned.

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Visage à trois #158

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Ketanji Brown Jackson chose leniency even in baby sex torture cases

In the eight child-porn cases that came before her court, former D.C. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson heard horrifying details of “sadomasochistic” torture of young kids — including “infants and toddlers” — yet challenged the disturbing evidence presented by prosecutors and disregarded their prison recommendations to give the lightest possible punishments in each case, according to transcripts of sentencing hearings obtained by the Post.

In some cases, she even apologized to some of the kiddie-porn perverts for having to follow the statutes, which she called “substantially flawed.”

Over and over, the records reveal, Jackson made excuses for the sex fiends’ criminal behavior and cut them slack in defiance of investigators and prosecutors — and sometimes even probation officers serving her court — who argued for tougher sentences because the cases were particularly egregious or the defendants weren’t remorseful.

The fuller record of her orders as a trial judge, detailed here for the first time, undercuts the White House’s and Senate Democrats’ argument that her sentences were within the “normal range” or “mainstream” of child porn cases, as they try to defend the Supreme Court nod against growing allegations she is soft on crime.

Jackson, 51, who tried the cases as an Obama appointee from 2013 to 2021, was nominated earlier this year by President Biden, who pledged during the campaign to put the first “black woman” on the high bench. The Senate will vote on her confirmation next week.

In July 2020, Jackson gave the bare minimum sentence to a defendant convicted of distributing images and videos of infants being sexually abused, and who had boasted of molesting his 13-year-old cousin, even though she knew the defendant refused “to take full responsibility” for his crimes, a transcript reveals. In 2018, Christopher Michael Downs was busted trading child porn in a private online chat room, “Pedos Only,” including images of adult males raping “a prepubescent female child,” according to court records. He posted 33 graphic photos, including an image of a naked female child as young as 2 years old. Downs, then 30, told the group, “I once fooled around with my 13-year-old cousin.” He also uploaded a 10-second video of “a prepubescent female lying in a bathtub and with an adult male inserting his penis into her mouth.”

Jackson herself admitted that the felon was at “risk of reoffending,” the transcript further reveals. But she declined to enhance his prison time based on the amount of porn he distributed, arguing such enhancements were “outdated” and “substantially flawed.” She acknowledged the average sentence nationally “for similarly situated defendants” was 81 months, but she gave him the statutory mandatory-minimum sentence of 60 months, which was short of the nearly six years prosecutors asked for. In addition, Jackson gave him credit for time served starting from when he was first incarcerated in October 2018, so technically she gave him only 38 months, or a little over three years, in the pen. Downs is scheduled for release in December.

In her April 2021 sentencing of child porn distributor Ryan Manning Cooper, Jackson contradicted the findings of prosecutors, dismissing the crimes they described as “on the more egregious or extreme spectrum” of child porn as not “especially egregious.” Among the more than 600 images prosecutors told the judge he traded were sexually explicit pics depicting bondage of infants and toddlers. Prosecutors also busted him with a video of a “pre-pubescent boy being penetrated anally and orally” by an older male.

“I’m really reluctant to get into the nature of the porn,” Jackson told the court before sentencing Cooper to prison time short of what the prosecution recommended.

“I don’t find persuasive the government’s arguments concerning why they think that this is a particularly egregious child pornography offense, which means I struggled to find a good reason to impose a sentence that is more severe in this case,” she argued.

Jackson cited “mitigating factors,” including letters family members sent to her describing Cooper as “kind, hard-working, dependable, loving. I have no reason to doubt those representations.” Striking a sympathetic tone, she advised the defendant: “There are going to be a lot of restrictions that the law places on you because you are a convicted sex offender, and you’re going to need the support of...

Visage à trois #157

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #331

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Racial Profiling and Kiddie Porn Replace the Three Rs in Maine’s K-12 Classrooms

Welcome to leftist education.

How dare Maine parents raise questions about the education of their children!

Who do they think they are?

After all, Maine’s K-12 public schools are doing an outstanding job preparing the next generation of Mainers for meaningful careers, further education, and good citizenship. We’re getting a great return on the hundreds of millions of dollars we spend every year on public education, aren’t we?

OK, I’m being sarcastic.

In fact, I believe sarcasm and ridicule are entirely appropriate in response to a lame Leftist hit piece attacking me for calling attention to what’s going on in Maine’s failing and dysfunctional public schools.

Titled, Book bans: Marginalized people deserve to have their stories told, the column by Aspen Ruhlin was published by the Maine Beacon, the online propaganda organ of the radically woke Maine Peoples Alliance. Ruhlin is a self-proclaimed “queer” transgender advocate who uses the plural pronouns “they” and “their,” and works at a Bangor abortion clinic.

Ruhlin cites the Hampden school district (Regional School Unit 22) in eastern Maine as a hotbed of right-wing opposition to what she refers to as the “bogeyman” of Critical Race Theory, and she singles me out as one of the leaders “in the fight against literature” at Hampden schools.

Here’s the rest of the story.

Three years ago, during my last of four terms in the Maine House of Representatives, I sponsored a bill to outlaw political indoctrination in Maine’s K-12 public-school classrooms. Based on model legislation drafted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the proposed legislation would have barred teachers from singling out one racial group of students as responsible for the suffering or inequities of another racial group of students.

In a nutshell, that’s exactly what Critical Race Theory (CRT) does.

The public hearing on the bill drew strong support and voluminous testimony from scores of parents and taxpayers across the state, who provided first-hand accounts of the overt left-wing bias in K-12 classroom instruction. But the education committee sided with the teachers’ unions and their allies in the Maine Department of Education who opposed the legislation, so the bill never made it to the full Legislature for a vote.

Last year the bill was introduced again, prompting another round of passionate testimony in committee that resulted in a party-line vote to advance the bill to the full Legislature. After a robust floor debate in the House and Senate, the bill was defeated on a party-line vote in both chambers, an outcome that sets the stage for making CRT indoctrination an issue in state legislative races this year.

With that legislative history in mind, let’s examine Ruhlin’s claim that conservatives are pushing for “book bans” in Hampden and elsewhere across Maine.

First of all, nobody I know is proposing to “ban” any books. Parents who want their children exposed to the racist, revolutionary claptrap known as Critical Race Theory are free to purchase that material on their own dime. The same goes for the demented LGBTQ+ propaganda that encourages kids in elementary school to pick their preferred pronouns and choose among dozens of different genders.

Let’s not “ban” these books. Just keep that woke rubbish out of public-school libraries, and off teachers’ recommended reading lists. That’s all parents are asking of their servants who sit on local school boards.

In Hampden, I filed several Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) requests to find out the extent to which the district was engaged in CRT brainwashing. After some initial foot-dragging and stone-walling, superintendent Regan Nickels provided me with the requested public records.

What I discovered is that the school district paid thousands of dollars for teacher training material that reeks of racial profiling, racial stereotyping, and racial scapegoating. Hosted by the Augusta-based non-profit Cultural Competence Institute, these online trainings are grounded in the sacred texts of the CRT cult, including the rabidly racist “White Fragility” by Robin Diangelo.

My FOAA request only confirmed what was already obvious: that the Hampden school district is deeply infected with the twin plagues of CRT indoctrination and LGBTQ+ gender-bender madness.

That became clear late last year when the Maine Department of Education (MDOE) named Kelsey Stoyanova, a middle school teacher in the district, the Maine Teacher of the Year. The educrats in Augusta specifically cited Stoyanova’s recommended reading list for students as a key factor in...