High Court declines child-porn case

The US Supreme Court refused to hear the constitutional challenge to a 200-year prison term for an Arizona man convicted of possessing child pornography, Reuters reports. It was "turning down his appeal arguing that the sentence was excessive or cruel and unusual punishment" for someone with no previous criminal record. The man's lawyers said that Arizona law, with its mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for each image of child pornography to be served consecutively "is the toughest in the nation" Under federal law, the man would have received a sentence of about five years' imprisonment, Reuters added.