US v. Jacob Ross, No. 22-4054 (4th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this Case
Defendant was convicted of producing and possessing child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 2251(a) and 18 U.S.C. Section 2252A, respectively, and sentenced to fifty-five years in prison. On appeal, Defendant argued that the district court erred by identifying him for a key government witness after the witness was initially unable to make the in-court identification herself. Defendant also contends that his sentence was grossly disproportionate to his offenses in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that it cannot infer that Defendant’s fifty-five-year sentence is grossly disproportionate to his offenses. The court reasoned that even if it assumes that his sentence is the functional equivalent of a life sentence without the possibility of parole,his child pornography offenses “are at least as grave as the drug offense in Harmelin, which the Supreme Court deemed sufficiently egregious to justify a similar sentence.” On multiple occasions, Defendant paid a woman in the Philippines not only to pose very young children in a pornographic manner, but also to molest them for his own sexual gratification. Defendant’s offenses, which directly facilitated the exploitation and sexual abuse of particularly vulnerable victims, are far from “one of the most passive felonies a person could commit.”
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.