Carissa Byrne Hessick

Associate Professor Carissa Byrne Hessick was quoted in a March 7 New York Times article entitled, “Michigan town split on child pornography charges,” by reporter Erica Goode.

The article focused on a complicated case where a 21-year-old man edited a video to make it appear that young school children were listening to him sing a sexually explicit song, when in fact he sang to an empty room. The man is being charged with manufacturing and distributing child pornography.

Hessick explained that the rise of technology has created situations where people are arrested and charged with child pornography in connection with digitally altered images even where no child was abused.

To read the entire article, click here.

Hessick teaches criminal procedure, criminal law and a seminar on sentencing law and policy. Her research focuses on aggravation and mitigation in criminal sentencing, relative crime severity and other political and doctrinal issues associated with sentencing. She recently completed an article to be published in the California Law Review on the constitutionality of common sentencing factors, as well as an article in the Boston University Law Review on whether military service and other good works ought to be treated as mitigating sentencing factors.