Restitution Returns to the United States Supreme Court (again)
Today, James R. Marsh of the Marsh Law Firm and Paul G. Cassell of the University of Utah College of Law Appellate Legal Clinic, filed a brief in the United States Supreme Court in their latest effort to convince the Court to consider the critical issue of criminal restitution for victims of child pornography.
The case, Doyle Randall Paroline v. Amy Unknown, arises out of a long-fought extensively litigated restitution action which started almost four years ago before Judge Leonard Davis in the Eastern District of Texas Tyler Division.
In January, the defendant filed a ...
10th Circuit Fires the Series-Qualifier Canon Across the Restitution Bow
Earlier this month, in an uninspired decision in United States v. Benoit, the Tenth Circuit held that "showing only that defendant participated in the audience of persons who viewed the images of the victim…may be sufficient to establish that defendant's actions were one cause of the generalized harm victims suffered due to the circulation of their images on the internet, but it is not sufficient to show that they were a proximate cause of any particular losses."
In other words, "generalized harm" = no foul and no restitution for victims of child pornography.
Acc...
Behind the Cover Story: Emily Bazelon on Pornography and Punishment
Emily Bazelon discusses her New York Times Magazine cover story, The Price of a Stolen Childhood, about the Marsh Law Firm's groundbreaking work representing victims of child pornography.
Behind the Cover Story: Emily Bazelon on Pornography and Punishment
"It's a common refrain in child pornography cases to say that it is a victimless crime. The person who downloaded the image was quote unquote just looking. Restitution helps force them to see that they are part of a market that depends on hurting real children."
Opprescedent Decisions Continue for Victims of Child Pornography
Last month, in United States v. Robert M. Fast, the Eighth Circuit, in a 2-1 split decision, rejected full restitution for child pornography victims, holding that:
Congress determined that these [child pornography] restitution offenses typically proximately cause the losses enumerated in subsections 2259(b)(3)(A) through (E). Congress did not mean that a specific defendant automatically proximately causes those losses in every case. The government still has to prove that the defendant proximately caused those losses.
[I]njury to the child depicted in the child pornograp...
Sixth Circuit Rejects Commonsense Approach to Child Pornography Restitution
Last week, the Sixth Circuit issued this confusing decision on child pornography restitution in the combined cases of United States v. James D. Gamble and Shawn Crawford.
The Court held that the child pornography restitution statute contains both a cause-in-fact requirement—i.e., a showing that the defendant's conduct actually caused the victim's losses—and and a requirement that the cause be proximate.
The Court found that "the statute still allows victims to collect more restitution than under earlier and concurrent restitution statutes. The statute expands ...
Federal Child Pornography Offenses – Report to Congress
This report is the result of a multi-year process in which the United States Sentencing Commission (“the Commission”) examined cases of offenders sentenced under the federal sentencing guidelines and corresponding penal statutes concerning child pornography offenses.
The purpose of this report is to contribute to the ongoing assessment by Congress and the various stakeholders in the federal criminal justice system regarding how federal child pornography offenders are prosecuted, sentenced, incarcerated, and supervised following their reentry into the communi...
Child Pornography: A Modern Day Childhood Gonorrhea Epidemic
I am reading a fascinating book by Lynn Sacco, an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, entitled Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History.
Unspeakable is an excellent book which explains how cultural mores and political needs distorted attitudes toward and medical knowledge of patriarchal sexual abuse at a time when the nation was committed to the familial power of white fathers and the idealized white family.For much of the nineteenth century, father-daughter incest was understood to take place among all classes and ...