Unfortunately the US legal system is not defendant friendly. While the US claims "innocent until proven guilty" our legal system is structured opposite. The other, larger in my opinion, problem is that the focus has gone from using common sense to zero tolerance. This case is a prime example. I am not by any means support child pornography, but at the same time the sex offender laws in the US are out of control. Take for example a friend of mine who was drunk and got peeing in front of car on a dark street. A cop just happened to see him and he was subsequently arrested, charged, and convicted of indecent exposure. Because of the conviction he had to register as a sex offender. The US sex offender registry makes no distinction though between the individual caught peeing in the alley and the person who has molested hundreds of kids. The bigger issue is that no politician will touch correcting the situation for fear of being labeled as support child pornography. So while everyone knows the system is screwed up, and people continued to be punished harshly because of it, nothing will change because everyone is so scared to talk about the problem in the first place.
There are many other cases, outside of sex offenses, where individuals who may be guilty of a lesser crime take a plea deal to a larger crime to avoid the cost, time, and most importantly uncertainty associated with going to trial. I think, at least with sex offenses, we will see in the future a shift in dealing with the problem though. It is somewhat like drugs. In the early 1980s Reagan was hard-nosed on the war on drugs. He enacted stiff penalties and encouraged three strike laws. This sent a lot of people to jail for a long time on charges that were otherwise non-offenses. You see people in California serving life sentences for having three charges of possession of marijuana. Today though as a younger generation comes into power, and people are slowly changing their views on marijuana, we are seeing a shift in punishment for the same crimes. I predict that at some point there will be tipping point with crimes like this article highlight where people will say enough is enough we need to fix this problem. Until then though, you are going to see more and more articles like this.
There are many other cases, outside of sex offenses, where individuals who may be guilty of a lesser crime take a plea deal to a larger crime to avoid the cost, time, and most importantly uncertainty associated with going to trial. I think, at least with sex offenses, we will see in the future a shift in dealing with the problem though. It is somewhat like drugs. In the early 1980s Reagan was hard-nosed on the war on drugs. He enacted stiff penalties and encouraged three strike laws. This sent a lot of people to jail for a long time on charges that were otherwise non-offenses. You see people in California serving life sentences for having three charges of possession of marijuana. Today though as a younger generation comes into power, and people are slowly changing their views on marijuana, we are seeing a shift in punishment for the same crimes. I predict that at some point there will be tipping point with crimes like this article highlight where people will say enough is enough we need to fix this problem. Until then though, you are going to see more and more articles like this.