Convicted Child Porn Felons Object To Jared Fogle's Lenient Plea Deal

When federal prosecutors announced a plea agreement with former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle under which he could be sentenced to at least five years and no more than twelve and a half years, legal commentators told local media the plea agreement was in line with what has been offered to similarly-situated defendants. That assertion was total bunk. If you look only at the sentence ranges handed down in the Southern District of Indiana alone in the past few years, you would quickly discern the sentencing range offered to Fogle was below the average meted out to others busted on child porn charges and that includes defendants never convicted of having sex with minors. Fogle admitted to having sex with at least two minor girls for money in New York City hotel rooms, in addition to receiving child porn images from Russell Taylor, the man he hired to run his nonprofit organization.

WRTV is reporting that convicted child porn felons have written letters to the federal magistrate and judge handling Fogle's sentencing urging them to reject Fogle's lenient plea agreement. They argue Fogle is receiving a better deal because he's a multi-millionaire with the ability to make generous restitution payments to the victims unlike most offenders convicted of child-related crimes. One federal inmate, Thomas Ford, claims to be serving a 198-month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Miami for one count of distributing child pornography. Federal Bureau of Prison records confirm he's not scheduled for release until October 2, 2024. Another federal inmate, Scott Petrie, claims he's serving a 40-year sentence at a federal prison in Tuscon, Arizona for trading child pornography. Federal Bureau of Prison records confirm he's not scheduled for release until September 26, 2047.

Personally, I don't feel the problem is with Fogle's proposed sentencing being too lenient. The problem is that federal judges are sending offenders to prison for lengthier prison sentences for child porn-related cases than persons convicted of serious, violent felonies. Both Ford's and Petrie's sentences appear too harsh. Ford's 20-year sentence was in addition to a more than 19-year sentence he had received from in a prior conviction for attempting to lure a minor to engage in sex with him. Petrie was sentenced to more than 40 years for distributing more than 4,000 pornographic images of underage girls. Petrie had served a previous state prison sentence for abusing three underage girls before being busted by the feds for distributing child porn images.