Seventh Circuit Supports Suspicious Statistics

United States v. Schmitt, which came out of the hallowed Seventh Circuit today, vacated another sentence within the guidelines for a child porn connoisseur, although luckily not another imposed by the interminable Shabaz (it was from the EDW). The range was 63 to 78 months and dude got 63 months, but, through some mathmagical legal research, he was able to come up with an awesome statistic:

"At his sentencing hearing, he showed convincingly that the overwhelming majority of defendants charged with the same crime in the state courts covering the same area as the Eastern District of Wisconsin received sentences far lower than 63 months. Indeed, only nine of 104 defendants sentenced in the previous five years in those counties received any prison time at all. Schmitt argued to the district court that it should take this evidence into account and sentence him below the guideline minimum. The district judge disagreed and imposed a guideline sentence of 63 months."

The Seventh Circuit thought the sentencing judge was too confined by the advisory guidelines and vacated for resentencing. Along with being one of only 10 kiddie diddler watchers to serve time in his district, Schmitt apparently doubled as an amateur saint:

There is a difference between weighing the seriousness of a particular offense more heavily under § 3553(a), and feeling compelled to impose a guideline sentence for a particular class of crimes. The latter approach inappropriately limits the consideration that a district judge gives to the entire range of factors made relevant by § 3553(a) before choosing a sentence. It especially devalues those factors that are unique to an individual defendant—like the “wonderful things” noted by the district judge that were said about Schmitt—that are not taken into account when calculating the guideline range.

Maybe Judge Wood had sympathy for dude because he was caught by the Norwegian government:

In March 2004, the Norwegian government, attempting to identify potential possessors and distributors of child pornography, began investigating the global use of computer-based, peer-to-peer file sharing programs. In the course of that investigation, Schmitt’s internet protocol address was identified as having shared at least seven files containing child pornography. The Norwegians shared this information with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), which then pursued its own investigation.

Hey, the Norwegians get us all from time to time.