More Thoughts On My Sentencing - 11/19/2010

[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. You can find everything from my pretrial detention journal that is published under the “Pretrial Detention” link under topics on the right hand of your screen. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 11/11/2025.]

I got 151 months for transmitting and possessing illegal images. No victims, first time offender, and no pathological tendencies. Remember all of that.

I hope the transcript of my sentencing hearing will be online at some point. I suggest reading it.

I got 151to deter other people from doing what I did. Deter means warning other people what can happen if they do what I did.

The federal government did nothing to publicize my sentence. How this silence helps my sentence deter others is a question best put to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana.

Another reason for my 151 months was to deter me. Frankly, I was sick of all of what got me in trouble before I got arrested.

I will also be under lifetime supervision by the federal courts following my imprisonment. I violate that and I go back to prison.

Reading the sentencing transcript will show that there was no explanation of why 60 months (the minimum sentence under the federal statute) would deter me any less than 151 months - except that this was the minimum time under the federal sentencing guidelines. The federal prosecutor argued that the number and type of images showed I had a certain pathological condition. The forensic shrink, evaluating me, found me not fitting into any such profile. (The women who know me best have no dispute about that, but they do think I am manic depressive rather merely severely depressed.)

No one can explain why if 151 months is to deter me I am to be on lifetime supervision. Nor has anyone explained why a lesser imprisonment would not deter me when combined with lifetime supervision. You will need to put that question to not only the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, but to your Congressperson and Senators.

For anyone doing what I did:

1. The federal government will put you in prison for many years above the federal minimum sentence, without probation or home detention.
2. You will be considered to have pathological issues that make you too dangerous to be on the loose - even if there is no evidence for any such psychological condition.
3. Do not think there is any rationale to the federal guidelines other than punishment.
4. Stop doing what you are doing.
5. If you cannot stop, get mental health help.

And if you want to stop the trading of illegal images, then stop relying on the federal government. Chip in and see that information like this gets out onto the internet.

sch

[2025 looking back at 2010 sees that I omitted - or the point is in an entry now lost - that the federal government made much noise about my arrest without putting out similar publicity for my sentence. Deterrence requires publicity. Raising an agency's profile to rake in more funds from Congress is achieved by making loud noises about the agency's activities. I do not mind being used to deter - it justifies the sentence I served and even more so, I saw more than enough ugliness that I would happily see its transmission stopped . But being a poster boy for why ICE should have gotten more funding is its own sort of ugliness - a self-justifying fraud that I do not wish to be a part of.

As for my life under supervised release, do take a look at the right-hand of your screen and go down to where there is a list of topics. “Supervised release” is one of those topics. You will find how useless it is and how I have been living since my release.

No one trained in psychology has found I fit within the psychological definition of the mentality that is interested in children. That has not mattered one bit to the court. They are beholden to what I hope is a superstition, or to the fear of political backlash. Otherwise, I fear they are projecting their own fantasies and/or their predilections onto me.

sch 11/11/2025]