Wesley Hawkins, the child porn criminal sentence to just three months in prison by Biden Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, told the Washington Post that he was angry with her for being sent to prison at all until fellow first time child porn convicts told him they had received sentences of five or six years in prison. Hawkins says he ended up feeling sympathy for Jackson that she had to sentence him for a crime he committed when he was just getting started in life. Hawkins is now 27, he was 18 when arrested and 19 when he was sentenced by Jackson.
Perhaps most surprising, Hawkins said, was that he found himself feeling sympathy for the judge he had once been angry with for sending him to prison.
“I wasn’t very happy that she gave me three months, though after reflection when I was in jail, I was hearing from other people who said it was their first time arrested and they got five years, six years.
“I feel that she chose to take into consideration the fact that I was just getting started [in life] and she knew this was going to hold me back for years to come regardless,” he said, “so she didn’t really want to add on to that.”
Hawkins says he did not reoffend as has been reported, but that he was caught searching online for non-pornographic photos of undergae teen boys and was pulled back in to a halfway house.
Hawkins acknowledged that he had been in a “dark” place six years after his release from prison, having lost a job at a retail store. He did not dispute a probation petition — sealed in his case but described to The Post — that in 2019, he had searched for non-pornographic material and images of males 13- to 16-years-old, prompting Jackson to send him to the halfway house.
“As it clearly states in [my court file] it was not because I reoffended, it was not because I had done anything even illegal,” Hawkins told The Post. “According to the treatment I was in, they felt I was at a high risk of reoffending.”
Videos of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) questioning Jackson and reading her own words on the Hawkins case back to her at this week’s confirmation hearing: