Ninth Circuit rejects Eighth Amendment challenge to 15 years for child porn distribution

The Ninth Circuit issued an unsurprising ruling today in US v. Meiners, No. 06-30389 (9th Cir. May 21, 2007) (available here), which rejects a defendant's claim that his 15-year federal sentence for advertising and distributing child porn was unconstitutional.  What makes the case blog-worthy is that the Meiners ruling emphasizes the particular harms that flow from advertising and distributing child pornography.  Meiners thus perhaps indirectly suggests that a very long sentence for simply receiving child porn — such as the 200-year Arizona state sentence given to a Phoenix high school teacher for simply possessing child pornography (basics here, commentary here) — might produce a different  Eighth Amendment assessment.

Some related posts on the Berger case:

• Arizona Supreme Court upholds 200-year sentence for possessing child porn
• What ever happened to state constitutional law, textualism, and libertarianism?
• Liberty versus security in the war on ... sex offenders
• More on the cert denied in Berger