NY Daily Record Since 1908
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court lent a sympathetic ear Wednesday to a victim of child pornography who wants the court to make it easier for victims to collect money from people convicted of downloading and viewing the pornographic images.
The woman known as Amy was at the court, her legal team said, for arguments in which the justices underscored that she and other victims of child pornography suffer serious psychological harm whenever anyone looks at their images online.
But the court seemed to struggle with determining how much restitution for counseling, lost income and legal fees any single defendant should be asked to pay.
The justices heard an appeal from Doyle Randall Paroline, who was held liable by a federal appeals court for the nearly $3.4 million judgment associated with the ongoing Internet trade and viewing of images of Amy being raped by her uncle when she was 8 and 9 years old. Paroline had hundreds of images of children on his computer when he was arrested but only two were of Amy.
“He’s guilty of the crime, but to sock him with all of her psychological costs and everything else because he had two pictures of her. Congress couldn’t have intended that,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in an exchange with Amy’s lawyer, Paul Cassell.
Several other justices also said they were troubled by the apparent lack of a link between the crime and the restitution order.
