Juries, on the other hand, are not trained in the law and are perfectly capable of engaging in nullification in the interests of justice. Honorable and responsible judges should not and are not supposed to engage in nullification because the risks of corruption are too extreme.
Hotten found the text to be unclear. And under the court’s own precedent, “[w]hen a statute can be interpreted in more than one way, the job of this Court is to resolve that ambiguity in light of the legislative intent.” Here, Hotten found ample evidence that Maryland “sought to protect children from exploitation and abuse as opposed to enacting laws that criminalized consensual sexual activity among minors.”
Under this rule, ambiguous criminal statutes must be interpreted in the defendant’s favor.
But there's all too often some bullshit justification as to why it's someone else's job to make sure justice gets served and these particular people in authority were "just doing their job."
The emperor in Mulan and the sultan in Aladdin taking it upon themselves to actually exercise their authority to do the right thing are, sadly, not how real people typically operate.
The judgment followed the law, and it's clear from the specific wording of the judgment https://www.mdcourts.gov/data/opinions/coa/2019/41a18.pdf that the judge is fully aware of all the issues.
The solution is for the legislatures to modify the law, if they want to.
Did this person distribute child pornography, as defined by the law, to others? Yes. Were the others minors as well? Yes.
> "[T]he language of CR § 11-207 in its plain meaning is all-encompassing. The General Assembly has not updated the statute’s language since the advent of sexting and thus we may not read into the statute an exception for minors."
Those are the judge's words, they are correct, and they explain why he had to rule this way.