Exclusive: Ketanji Brown Jackson Bypassed Sentencing Guidelines to Cut Prison Time fo
Exclusive: Ketanji Brown Jackson Bypassed Sentencing Guidelines to Cut Prison Time for Previously Deported Illegal Alien Drug Dealer
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by JOHN BINDER 31 Mar 2022
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court (SCOTUS), once bypassed federal sentencing guidelines to cut a previously-deported illegal alien drug dealer’s prison sentence, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.
In the 2013 case, while Jackson was serving on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, illegal alien Daniel Garcia-Guerrero of El Salvador had been charged with illegal re-entry after having already been deported from the U.S. at least once.
Garcia-Guerrero had also been previously convicted of drug trafficking for his time dealing drugs in the Washington, DC area.
After Garcia-Guerrero pleaded guilty to one count of illegal re-entry, Jackson advised the illegal alien that federal sentencing guidelines suggested a length of prison time from 27 to 33 months based on his current immigration offense and past record of dealing drugs.
At his sentencing hearing, which Breitbart News exclusively obtained a transcription of, an attorney for the federal government and Garcia-Guerrero’s attorney both agreed that a prison sentence “at the bottom of the guidelines is appropriate.”
“The bottom of the guidelines is still a fairly significant sentence in this case of twenty-seven months,” the attorney representing the Justice Department told Jackson.
“The low end of the guideline, I believe, takes into account all the factors … it’s not a slap on the wrist,” Garcia-Guerrero’s attorney said, agreeing with the government’s assessment.
Despite the government and the defendant having agreed on a 27-month prison sentence, Jackson skirted the sentencing guidelines to give Garcia-Guerrero a sentence of 21 months in federal prison — six months less than the lowest sentence recommended.
“It is also evident that Mr. Garcia-Guerrero keeps returning for economic reasons, to make a better life for himself and also presumably for his children — one of whom is an infant — who are here in the United States with their mothers,” Jackson said during the hearing:
Nevertheless, Mr. Garcia-Guerrero previously committed a serious drug trafficking offense on one of the prior occasions when he was previously in this country, and he was convicted of that drug offense in this very courthouse. [Emphasis added]
…
But the Court does take into account that in your returning, you did not commit an additional crime that the government is aware of, and that there were family circumstances that appeared to be the motivation for your return, and that given the party’s previous discussions and stipulations which, as we know were mistaken about the nature of the guidelines, nevertheless there were representations that a less severe sentence was the appropriate sentence for a defendant in your circumstance. [Emphasis added]
…
It is the judgment of the Court that you, Mr. Daniel Garcia-Guerrero are hereby committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for a term of twenty-one months on Count I. [Emphasis added]
The sentencing hearing’s transcription can be read below, in full:
Transcript_guerrero-garcia,… by John Binder
The case is only the latest that Jackson has come under fire for. In another case, also in 2013, Jackson sentenced then-19-year-old Wesley Hawkins to three months in prison, three months of home confinement, and six years of supervision after he was convicted of possessing child pornography where boys 8 to 12-years-old were depicted in sex acts.
Federal sentencing guidelines called for Hawkins to receive eight to ten years in prison, but prosecutors took into account his lack of criminal history and requested two years in prison. Hawkins’ defense team requested a single day in jail and five years of supervision.
Following his sentence, in 2019, Hawkins was ordered by Jackson to complete his supervised release at a halfway house, according to the Washington Post, because he had been searching “sexually arousing, non-pornographic material and images of males 13 to 16-years-old” and was highly likely to re-offend.
In a recent interview, Hawkins suggested that he was grateful for Jackson’s lenient sentence in his case, saying, “she knew this was going to hold me back for years to come … so she didn’t really want to add on to that.”
Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Kennedy (R-LA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), in response, authored a letter to Jackson, demanding she provide additional information on the Hawkins case.
Exclusive: Ketanji Brown Jackson Bypassed Sentencing Guidelines to Cut Prison Time for Previously Deported Illegal Alien Drug Dealer (breitbart.com)
