This week, a federal appeals court in Manhattan overturned an upstate Judge's ruling that a defendant caught with child pornography needed a harsher punishment because he was born with an "as-of-yet undiscovered gene" that predisposed him to look at child pornography.
Back in December 2009, Judge Gary L. Sharpe of Federal District Court in Albany sentenced Gary Cossey to a six-and-a-half-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography. In imposing the tough sentence, the Judge said he believed Cossey would not be able to stop himself from looking at child pornography again, despite therapy, “because of an as-of-yet undiscovered gene.” He was quoted as saying, “It is a gene you were born with. And it’s not a gene you can get rid of.”
On Thursday, a federal appeals court in Manhattan overturned that ruling on the defendant’s appeal, saying, “It would be impermissible for the court to base its decision of recidivism on its unsupported theory of genetics.” Earlier this month, a Brooklyn federal judge reluctantly sentenced a Bushwick pizzeria owner to five years in prison for possession of child pornography, calling the sentence "grossly excessive."
