Sentencing – Producing child pornography

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Sentencing – Producing child pornography

Where the defendant molested his girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter and took pornographic photographs of her, the maximum 360-month sentence is not unreasonable.

“Reibel is making what amounts to a marginal-deterrence argument (i.e., an argument that the harshest sentences must be reserved for the worst offenders, see United States v. Newsom, 428 F.3d 685, 688 (7th Cir. 2005)). But marginal-deterrence arguments stand a chance only if the sentencing scheme actually encourages criminals to commit more-serious crimes (for example, if the punishment for robbery were the same as that for murder, then robbers would have an incentive to murder any witnesses to their robberies). See United States v. Beier, 490 F.3d 572, 575 (7th Cir. 2007). The child-pornography sentencing scheme gives no such encouragement; offenders worse than Reibel can be given consecutive sentences or prosecuted separately for child molestation (or another crime). See id.; United States v. Klug, 670 F.3d 797, 801-02 (7th Cir. 2012); Maulding, 627 F.3d at 288. Reibel correctly points out that the consecutive-sentence option is available only for defendants facing multiple charges, but we have difficulty imagining an offender worse than Reibel who could neither be charged with more than one child-pornography count nor prosecuted separately for a related crime. In any event, the potential inaptness of the Guidelines in some sex cases does not obligate district judges to give all sex offenders below-Guidelines sentences. See United States v. Garthus, 652 F.3d 715, 721 (7th Cir. 2011); Maulding, 627 F.3d at 288; United States v. Huffstatler, 571 F.3d 620, 623-24 (7th Cir. 2009).”

Affirmed.

11-3416 U.S. v. Reibel

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Murphy, J., Per Curiam.

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