The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the one year mandatory sentence for anyone accessing or possessing child porn is unconstitutional. The ruling was a 5 to 4 decision.
Danielle Smith, premier of Alberta, immediately attacked the ruling. Smith wants the federal government to use the notwithstanding clause to overturn the Supreme Court ruling.
“The possession of child pornography is a heinous crime, and even a one-year minimum sentence is already far too lenient.”
At first blush, her statement is reasonable. As far as I’m concerned, anyone involved in child porn, whether creating it or watching it deserves the harshest sentence possible. So Danielle, you go girl.
But not everything is black-and-white. One of the justices wrote the following as an explanation as to why the Supreme Court ruled as it did.
“Indeed, this crime captures both the well-organized offender who, over the years, has accumulated thousands of files, and the offender who, one day, keeps a file that was sent to the offender without them requesting it.”
Now what are the chances of the second example happening? Most likely less than one percent. But what happens to that one person where that example did happen? Get thrown in jail for a year, through no fault of his or her own.
There is a simple solution to this without use of the withstanding clause. Just change the legislation to take into account these less than one percent scenarios. With regard to those cases where there’s actual involvement, whether creating or accessing of child porn, in my opinion, the mandatory sentence should be far more than one year. But that’s just me.
That’s all I got.