Is Utah protecting child predators with its standard sentence of only 0-210 days in Jail?

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Last year Judge Douglas Hogan issued a sentence that is the antithesis of justice.. When he sentenced admitted pedophile Tech CEO Douglas Saltsman to just 210 days in jail with credit for time served. 68 days  remained on his sentence at the time of the ruling. Those 68 days have now been completed and Douglas Saltsman has been released from custody. A man who pled guilty to possessing 13,000 files of child pornography has been allowed to walk free. 279 children have now been identified in those files. In addition to these files the defendant also had a drug lab in his home and additional videos of him sexually assaulting unconscious women. 

Police first investigated child pornography when they were alerted to an internet provider address that was sharing child pornography using a peer-to-peer file-sharing program.

  • This is a standard sentence in the State of Utah 0-210 days. Because the act of watching child sexual abuse isn't an in person crime like rape or the acts performed on the children in those files it isn't viewed by the Utah sentencing commission as punishable by a mandatory minimum of the 5 years it would be if the case had been charged federally.  The head of the Utah Sentencing Commission stridently argues the re-offension rate in Utah for child sex offenders according to her data is ONLY 4 percent. Try as she might to convince us that these predators risk of re-offending is low the trackable data shows 32.5 percent will re-offend and abuse another child after the first instance of sexual exploitation of a child. Whether it's 4 % as the Commissioner would like us to believe or the more realistic number of 32% our goal should be 0%. No child should be victimized by someone who has a record and has served time for crimes like these. Why does the Utah Sentencing Commission choose to re-victimize the children by letting someone capable of such heinous acts out of jail after less than a year? 

The prosecution and the defense had to agree on the terms of the plea agreement. The District attorneys office and Judge Hogan collaborated on this sentence. The Utah Sentencing Commission released a statement supporting Judge Hogans sentencing. Another wealthy CEO with money and influence walks away with only 210 days in jail. The Judge had the ability to deny this plea agreement and sentence him to at least 5 years in prison. Judge Hogan CHOSE not to. He chose not to sentence Saltsman to serving even just a day in custody for each of the 279 children identified in the images he pled guilty to possessing. 

Help me change the laws that allow Judges to pass these sentences. Laws that allow our D.A's and prosecutor's to get away with sentencing the rich and powerful to sentences like these. 

Lady Justice, you know the statues you've all seen them. She's often depicted blindfolded and holding scales. The scales represent the weighing of evidence, and the scales lack a foundation in order to signify that evidence should stand on its own. She is blindfolded to signify impartiality, the ideal that justice should be applied without regard to wealth, power, or other status. Was Judge Hogan blind to the wealth and power of the defendant? Does this sentence match the crime? 

Over 100,000 have stood with me in protest of the sentence handed down. We can do more than stand together, we can #SAVEOURCHILDREN. It starts with Voting Judge Hogan off the bench when his name comes up on your ballot. It starts when we take active roles in the management of our country. To the 1.5 million children enslaved worldwide we MUST do better. We must DEMAND justice and settle for nothing short of a punishment that fits the crime for the rape and enslavement of infants, toddlers, women and every trafficking victim still in chains. 


Are you ready to do something? 

Stand with me. Stand with our children. Vote Judge Douglas Hogan off the bench when his name comes up on your ballots. To the 1.5 million still enslaved we haven't forgotten you. You matter. We won't stop until we bring every single one of you home.