President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, suggested that “there were no identifiable victims” in a case where she reduced the prison sentence of a self-proclaimed drug “kingpin.”
During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jackson was asked about the case of convicted drug trafficker Keith Young whom, in 2018, she sentenced to 20 years in prison, but later reduced the sentence.
Young trafficked heroin laced with fentanyl, the deadly drug just one kilogram of which can kill half a million people. There are a million milligrams in one kilogram.
When asked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) if she had contacted the victims before reducing Young’s sentence, Jackson suggested that “there were no identifiable victims.”
The exchange went as follows:
COTTON: Judge Jackson, before you granted this fentanyl kingpin’s motion to reduce his sentence, did you contact any of the victims in his case?
JACKSON: Senator, thank you for allowing me to address Mr. Young’s situation.
COTTON: I asked a simple question, did you contact the victims in his case or not?
JACKSON: Senator, Mr. Young was not released. His sentence was reduced and I did not contact the victims in this case because there were no victims. He committed a crime, a drug crime. There were no identifiable victims in his case.
COTTON: Drug crimes are not victimless crimes — 100,000 Americans are killed by overdoses.
JACKSON: Understood Senator, but there was no one to contact because there were no identifiable…
As Cotton noted, Jackson initially apologized to Young for having to sentence him to 20 years in prison. Following passage of the First Step Act and amid the Chinese coronavirus crisis, Young requested compassionate release from federal prison.
Though Jackson denied the request, she rewarded him with a reduced sentence that cut his time in prison by at least seven years. Young bragged about his role as a drug “kingpin” and was authorizing payments for drugs while in prison before Jackson cut his sentence.
“You reduced his sentence. He didn’t file a motion to reduce his sentence. He wasn’t eligible for a reduced sentence under the First Step Act because it wasn’t retroactive toward him,” Cotton said.
“You took a motion for compassionate release, to get out of prison, and turned it into a motion to reduce a sentence so he is going to be released seven and a half years earlier, years from now,” he continued.
Across the United States, drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent years. From April 2020 to April 2021, for example, more than 100,000 Americans died from overdoses. Deaths from overdoses now outpace the number of Americans killed from car crashes and guns, combined.
Readers can watch day three of Jackson’s confirmation hearing here.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.