Slashdot Mirror
After Aaron Swartz's Death, the Focus Now Falls On the Prosecutors
Marcion writes "Journalists and commentators are now questioning the role of Massachusetts prosecutors Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann in the suicide of Aaron Swartz and whether they levied disproportionate charges in order to boost their own political profiles, despite being warned he was a suicide risk. Meanwhile White House petitions to remove Ortiz and Heymann have already received tens of thousands of signatures. Should these prosecutors be investigated for their actions regarding Swartz?"
Wow. From what you're saying, you really know absolutely nothing about this story at all, do you?
Whether the person is a suicide risk should not be a factor in the charges that are brought.
Focusing on those two (whose behavior does indeed seem pretty despicable) is going to accomplish very little in the long term. Instead, lets revamp some of the fundamentals of our so-called Justice System. Stop letting prosecutors pick and choose who to charge at their own whim, with little to zero oversight. Punish prosecutors who bring charges in bad faith. End the system of plea-bargains and return to the jury trials that are supposed to be the core of our criminal law.
Putting the actual tragedy aside; it's great that people are talking about the bully tactics from US prosecution. However people need to understand that this probably is fairly systemic with a system that cares about results more than it cares about justice. It's great that people are discussing the subject, but making an example of two of the players is just a cheap trick that stops people taking a long and hard look at the game thats being played.
So if we cannot prove that there was direct causation, then are the prosecutor's actions a-okay? N. O.
People in a position of authority or trust should not be treating other human beings like dirt, because they think they can get away with it. I do not care if they are a DoJ suit or an asshole roommate named Dharun Ravi.
Let's not use the unknowables of the suicide in a rush to judgement. Let's wind back the clock to the day before Aaron killed himself and ask a very simple question: WTF?! As so many have already pointed out, there are so many individuals involved in so many schemes that have had REAL NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES that it is just unimaginable that they would have prioritized this case as they had, and that they would be threatening to lock up somebody whose actions were much more like civil disobedience than criminal mischief, and even less like criminal behavior.
When prosecutors prioritize cases based on their ability to really trounce the little guy, rather than to take down the big guy, we have a problem and need a new batch of prosecutors. Aaron's suicide, if it was related, only makes this case the more tragic, but no less relevant.
Lets just scare a 26 year old into thinking hes going to be forever labeled a felon... This means no job in the IT industry, one heck of a time finding housing, and good luck with quite a few other aspects of life that people take for granted. By the way, you get to do 35 years in PRISON, not jail, PRISON. The place where you either join a gang or get raped.
Ortiz's dipshit husband says "he had a plea bargain for 6 months." Oh sweet, I get to get raped for 6 months instead of 35 years. But also face the whole not ever being able to find a job, and having to live with my parents because no one will rent me a place...
I would have offed myself too. Dear DOJ, go f' yourself.
Well, even though he was young at 26, he was facing 35 years in prison. So he would have possibly gotten out when he was 61, maybe earlier with good behavior, but who knows.
options:
a) End your life at 26, you'll be remembered well by your accomplishments and won't have to suffer.
b) A stressful slog through a court case that will leave you in jail for a very long time. In jail the boredom is broken periodically by suffering. If you survive jail, you'll get out, when you're elderly, and then maybe you'll be able to re-acclimate to society after you've spent more than half your life a prisoner.
The main issue is that the prosecutor was an asshole bully and threatened Swartz with 35 years in the big house for downloading publicly-funded scientific articles, and proceeded full speed ahead even after JSTOR asked them to drop it. There was no prosecutorial discretion -- they were threatening to throw the book at him for what was at best a trespassing misdemeanor. Those are the actions of a compassion-less psychopath, and I for one don't think anyone like that deserves to be a Federal prosecutor. We deserve better. So to a certain extent, Swartz's suicide is a completely separate issue.
I think a much better tribute to Swartz spirit and memory than retribution would be making some of his goals into reality.
This is a fantastic essay on the subject: http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2013/01/14/now/
It's well past time for scholarly knowledge to be openly accessible to everyone.
It's a material fact about our criminal justice system that prosecutors put people they know to be innocent away for life. Check out the Innocence Project for the grotesque details.
The reason I bring that up is because it dramatically illustrates the power and fearlessness of ever being called to account that all DAs have. The immunity from any fear of prosecution of their own crimes basically puts them above the law- a fact that doesn't go unnoticed by them. They can literally do anything they want no matter how unbalanced or depraved so long as they can dress it up as prosecutorial "zeal".. They know that the general population doesn't track on the details of cases and ALL families of accused say their prosecution is unjust , so that doesn't matter either. They can do whatever they want, however they want for any reason they want. They suppress exculpatory evidence as a matter of course- basically they play the role of good ole' Buford T Justice where they decide who's guilty and create through whatever means necessary the evidence to prove it.
Try being a minority caught in the clutches of our system. Why do you think so many poor African Americans are so totally checked out, fatalistic, knowing and cynical when it comes to matters of criminal justice? Because they know no one cares if they see anything like justice or not and that there is no real justice or just cause , there's "just us" and "just cuz" for them.
So Aaron got caught in THAT system and the video of him attempting to hide his face with a bike helmet enraged and incensed one of these DAs who had the full cooperation of the sociopaths in the upper administration of MIT.
It's a good reason to never convict / indict anyone for anything that might lead to jail. Jail is basically sado-hell where society throws people it's mad at without a shred or a care about what happens to them in there or when they get out either.
The only people you should ever indict or convict are very violent people who just cannot control themselves and will surely re-offend the first chance they get. Everyone else should walk.
As a side note, it's a fact also that they won't put scientists or programmers on juries because they are too good at thinking up potentially exculpatory alternative hypothesis and more immune to DAs wide-eyed narratives of moral outrage strung together with circumstantial doo-dads and character assassination. Juries are largely composed of retirees and gung ho Law and Order fans.
Just the threat of jail surely turned Aaron around a long time ago. Did that DA give a shit? Oh fuck no- he's bucking for bigger office, a better job, maybe political office. Anyone who puts a bike helmet over his face knows he (age what??? 24?) is doing something naughty , and now, as Lessig said, "we get to nuke you. "
No indictments. No convictions. Not until things change in this fucking country. Fuck you Conn. Fuck you asshole DAs. Too bad you need us to rubber stamp your dirty work before you can kill again. Denied. Denied denied denied denied. Fuck you.
Now are blaming Aaron Swartz's death on everyone and anything. Was it MIT? Was it the government? Was it him being bullied by them?
Well, this sort of "who done it?" finger pointing isn't very productive. And that's because suicide is rarely a single factor. Even when the person provides a suicide note that blames one single thing or person, there's often other contributing factors. So I think the discussion here is what was the major contributing factor. It sort of reminds me of "Who Killed Davey Moore" by Bob Dylan where a boxer is killed in a ring and as he examines everyone who participated in the event shrugs any responsibility.
In the strictest sense of responsibility, we here at Slashdot that turned our gaze upon this story and turned it into a national news story that was part of the 24 hour news cycle, we might have had something to do with it by putting even more pressure on the prosecutor and Swartz and everyone involved. Some of these things are hard if not impossible to know.
At the end of the day, it looks safe to blame some of his actions on the prosecutors for being overzealous but I would caution everyone not to put the blame entirely on them or even mostly on them. You should not send the message that suicide is an acceptable way to "get back" at someone or to "really show your enemies and make them sorry." Vocally blame the prosecutors all you want, this is America. But I don't think it's healthy for us to charge them with anything lest other people think that suicide with targeted blame is a great way to make high ranking officials culpable of something.
What I wish Swartz would have done was to step up to the challenge laid before him and see it through. Start a kickstarter for legal fees, seek help from the EFF, do something. Instead he did nothing and turned himself into nothing. If you're prepared to take such extensive means to reach certain ends then you had better be prepared to face the consequences of those actions, regardless of what they turn out to be. If the consequences are trumped up, you'll get your day in court and, like so many arrested during the civil rights era, if you're right you'll be remembered fondly in the annals of history. Instead he's a corpse and a fond memory of his contributions. Indeed incredibly sad but also by his own hand.
The prosecutors did not kill Swartz. But they contributed to a situation that caused him to take his own life. They should feel sorrow for that but I see no wrong. Attack the laws they charged him with if you attack something. But if they over charged him, his day in court should have shown that. Now we'll never know.
My work here is dung.
People have a tendency to behave in ways that give them the most recognition, whether that recognition is stature, monetary reward or both.
For whatever reason prosecutors seem to be rewarded based on a win percentage, which is objective, vs. a justice served percentage which is subjective. Combine this reward system with an overcrowded judicial system and we end up with a bastardized incentive system that rewards over-charging suspects and attempting to get the suspect to plead down to a lesser charge. Either the person deserves to be tried for the higher charge or not. Using the potential of serious punishment in order to convince a defendant to accept a lesser charge does not serve justice.
I think Elliott Spitzer was a great example of this type of prosecutorial abuse. He developed a model where he went after many people who had committed no crime but were willing to plead down to lesser crimes to avoid the potential punishment and drawn-out legal process of facing a daunting legal challenge. Spitzer's final year or so when he was getting ready to run for governor was quite disgusting in that there were many people indicted during his run for governorship and the charges were dropped after the election because they weren't fully baked. I've argued that prosecutors should not be allowed to run for another office until at least two years after their last stint as a prosecutor to avoid the conflict of interest associated with running up prosecutorial win rates while running for another office.
I saw Spitzer on his CNN show after his fall from grace and he said as much when he promoted, in order to stop behavior with which he disagreed, of indicting a group of people for a crime. He said that they would never have to get a conviction because the mere threat would be enough to stop the behavior. This is a person willing to abuse his power in order to change the otherwise legal behavior of people with whom he disagreed.
Ted Stevens (Senator Internet Pipes) had prosecutors who were sanctioned and had his conviction overturned as a result. Unfortunately, his conviction was overturned after his death and cost him an election. Whether you liked Senator Internet Pipes or not doesn't change the fact that using federal prosecutors to intimidate citizens is unacceptable.
These aren't the only two cases. I seem to recall a number of prosecutorial misconduct cases over the past few years and it's a crying shame that it continues and costs so much pain for ordinary citizens.
Combine prosecutorial misconduct with the avalanche of new laws and regulations coming our way and we can expect this trend to continue mainly because we never know when we've run afoul of some law or regulation with which we are unfamiliar.
The prosecutors brought charges far out of proportion with the "crime" of...downloading a bunch of papers in order to "set an example" for other people who might want to do something on computer networks they don't understand yet somehow find threatening.
This seems to happen a lot. Massive overreactions to harmless pranks. Say something critical about the TSA or the FBI online and get put on some watch list for being a "cyberterrorist." Change your MAC address and download some freely available research papers and get 35 years and a million dollar fine for "hacking."
Perhaps it's time another example were made. Hey prosectors and government dipshits: if you don't start employing some common sense, then you're going to lose your career.
Fire 'em. Make an example out of them.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The simple fact is that whichever party they're a member of, prosecutors have incredible levels of immunity from the effects of both their own malice and incompetence.
To go on the attack against Republicans, here in Texas, we (the taxpayers) had to pay out a pretty hefty wrongful imprisonment fee because one prosecutor hid the existence of a bloody bandana for years, and when it was finally discovered, a second prosecutor blocked testing of it for several years more.
When the Innocence Project finally got a court to force the prosecutors to allow testing of the blood, it turned up the victim's DNA and another man's DNA... the other man having gone on to possibly kill other people while an innocent guy sat in jail in his place. No big deal, apparently. The first guy might get to face a court regarding the withholding of evidence, but his tribunal seems to keep slipping farther into the future.
At least the second guy got voted out by an angry public (though that's not going to get them their millions of tax dollars back), but don't cry too much for him, his best bud Gov. Rick Perry will keep him employed.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The criminal justice system in the USA appears to be almost entirely geared towards extracting more tax money to pay for bigger and more heavily populated prisons and building name recognition for politicians and prosecutors, and as a result is paying a colossal and unnecessary and is a world wide laughing stock. I and a lot of my friends would not consider living in the USA as a result of this Criminal-Justice system run amok, scary thuggish police, (dreadfully overpriced yet widely inaccessible health care system is also another black mark).
The Criminal-Justice system needs to be reformed towards delivering the best results for society as a whole, not venal special interest groups. Disqualify anyone within the Criminal Justice industry (prosecutors, police, guards) from running for public office for at least a few years after they end employment, also disallow campaign contributions from private prisons, and guard+police unions.
Our Federal legal system has gottent out of control. The laws have become too complex and convoluted for a layman to understand and the penalties have become way too large. There is a reason that less than 1 in 40 Federal prosecutions even make it to a court. The prosecutors make it almost impossible not to take a plea deal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I really can't fault Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann, their behavior is what the current system demands.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I know I'm going to burn some karma for saying this, but Slashdot readers need to get a grip. I remember similar calls for investigating the prosecutors when Hans Reiser was indicted, and how the Slashdot crowd was screaming for blood about the injustice when he was found guilty ... right up to the point where Reiser led the police to his wife's body.
Aaron Swartz made two big mistakes. The first was using MIT's network to download the JSTOR documents, and evading their attempts to stop him. Stop and think why MIT didn't try to curtail the Feds' prosecution: Swartz betrayed their trust by doing what he did. How would you feel if you suddenly learned that someone you trusted, and allowed access to your system, was using your network to download material in a way that was guaranteed to get some powerful people up in arms? If you're going to involve other parties in your act of civil disobedience, you should show them enough respect to ask them first.
His second mistake (in my opinion) was listening to the sort of faux bravado that is so prevalent on Slashdot. "Fight them, Aaron! Information wants to be free! Don't cop a plea!" I've read that he was offered a six month sentence in a plea bargain. Rather than take that offer (which would have given him maybe four to five months in a minimum security facility) and come out smelling like a rose for his act of civil disobedience, he decided to fight it out against an opponent with essentially unlimited resources. And where are all the armchair cheerleaders when you're the one walking into the courtroom? Nowhere to be found.
I'm reminded of the vicious attacks on George Hotz (Geohot) by the armchair brigades when he backed down from Sony's threats. Hotz was smart; he realized how futile it would be to ruin his life in a battle he could not win. Sony offered him an easy way out, and Hotz wisely took it. Too bad Swartz (or his attorneys) didn't see fit to do likewise.
Swartz had a history of severe mental depression. Did his impending trial impact his mental state? No doubt. But when you turn down a plea bargain from the Feds, you can bet your bottom dollar they are going to put you through the wringer. In the end, it was Swartz's decision to abuse MIT's network, Swartz's decision to turn down the plea bargain, and Swartz's decision to end his life - not theirs.
Aaron Swartz was a bright and talented guy with a history of mental depression who made some bad choices, the worst of which was to commit suicide. And the ultimate irony? The JSTOR papers that "wanted to be free"? At any time, anyone could have gone to a local public university library, sat down in front of a terminal, and read those articles to his or her heart's content. That's what so ultimately ridiculous about this whole unfortunate mess.
US Federal prosecutors have a vast array of methods they can employ to make it difficult for a defendant to exercise his rights. They can freeze assets, making it nearly impossible to hire proper lawyers to present a case. They can "throw the book" at the defendant, listing dozens or hundreds of individual charges which each must be rebutted. They can do massive "document dumps" in the millions of pages to make it extremely difficult for the defendant's legal team to analyze them all. They can use their position to intimidate the defendant's insurers and/or corporations to compel them to withhold legal assistance, as was done in several high-profile white-collar prosecutions. It takes a great deal of money to mount an effective defense against prosecutors with nearly unlimited budgets, as Federal prosecutors are.
And then of course prosecutors have qualified immunity, which means that it is very difficult to make any kind of charges stick against them, no matter how egregious their behavior. We also see this with police officers in the infamous wrong-address SWAT raids.
There need to be consequences for prosecutors who abuse their positions.This could be done mathematically. One abuse is when prosecutors level massive charges with the goal of pleading them down. Thus there could be a maximum ratio of charges laid vs convictions/pleas on those exact charges. Another abuse is the investigation itself. So there could be a maximum investigation to conviction ratio. Also there could be a maximum time for an investigation. If someone is investigated for years and years the drain on them is nasty. So it should require a judge's approval to continue an investigation past a certain amount of time. For a crime boss this could be a great long time but for some dumb computer case it should be 30 days or less.
When consequences kick in there should be both penalties to the prosecutor and benefits to the investigated. Much like the double jeopardy if you charge someone with something serious that you can't make stick it should then be impossible to convict them in revenge on a minor related crime. So if you charge some hacker with RICO and massive fraud but can't make it stick you can't then convict him in revenge for mail fraud because he filled out some form wrong.
Then there is the prosecutor. If these ratios are passed by a certain amount the prosecutor should immediately be suspended and their continued employment up for review. Pass the ratios again and game over they lose their job.
The last option should also be that the defense can have a single prosecutor removed and assigned to a random other prosecutor. This way the "career making" cases are then less about politics and more about justice.
Only 3% of the defendants dop not accept a plea bargain. Do you know why? Because the possible sentences are ridiculous. Decades of punishment for relatively small crimes. In the face of the possibility of spending decades in jail and bankrupting yourself trying to defend your case, chances are you will accept a deal, even if you are innocent.
When was the last time the government (or anyone else for truth's sake) was right 97% of the time? Do you really think US prosecutors are? Isn't it more likely that a lot of innocent people are in jail right now because of this rotten and distorted judicial system?
It is no wonder that US has the highest incarcerated population in the world, per capita and in absolute values. Much more people are caged there than in other "blooming democracies" like China, North Korea or Iran.
It seems to be the standard operating procedure. Threaten the worst possible thing the law allows and wait for the defendant to cop to a lesser charge, then put this in your book of wins. Prosecutors without wins will lose their job, regardless of whether or not the wins were justified.
What would you think is an appropriate penalty for what Aaron did? He connected a computer to a public network, and retrieved publicly available data. He may have done this in a way and to an extent that the managers of these networks were uncomfortable with. Personally, I'd say that banning him from the library would have been too harsh.
Demanding jail time and felony convictions? It is so far beyond the pale that I think we are to be permitted our anger!
And, yes, he could have read them, one by one? But could he have done a global search using arbitrarily complex queries? Fed them into a neural network? Indeed, done anything actually interesting with them? Not unless he got heaps of them onto a hard drive.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Hans Reiser MURDERED HIS WIFE. Aaron Swartz ran wget -R on a web site he was permitted to access. Yup. Practically the same thing. You are so right.
I believe I've read elsewhere that he would have copped to a misdemeanor, but not a felony. I also read that Heyman refused to offer any plea that didn't include guilty on all felony counts.
But did you really just compare Aaron Swartz downloading material that you admit can be obtained for free pretty easily to Hans Reiser murdering his wife? Come on, Swartz didn't kill or injure anyone, and JSTOR wasn't asking for him to be prosecuted.
The only reason a six month plea bargain even appears reasonable is when it is juxtaposed to decades in prison. George Hotz did far more damage to Sony - they did try to sue him, unlike JSTOR - and Hotz did not have to plead guilty to anything for his deal, let alone labeled a felon and thrown in prison. It's a more reasonable analogy than Reiser, but Hotz is still very different.
And you also need to consider the problems associated with being a felon. Should Swartz have given up his right to defend himself with firearms for IP and MAC spoofing? The right to vote, in some states forever? Who would hire a man convicted of a dozen computer felonies?
There is no doubt in my mind that the prosecution was intentionally trying to make him plead out by massively trumping up charges. It was originally four felonies, later nine more were added. Again, JSTOR wasn't even asking for a lawsuit, and I haven't heard that MIT wanted to sue him either, so why were the prosecutors so eager to pin so many felonies on him?
Interestingly, Ortiz' office let some health care companies get away with doing some nasty things...and nobody had to plead guilty to anything, just some fines and settlements. Prescribing drugs only approved for adults to teens, putting the wrong drugs in the bottle, kickbacks for implanting medical devices unnecessarily...things that can actually injure someone...and not a single guilty plea? I would think what they did is far, far worse than what Swartz did. Using the technique of "trump up felony charges to force them to cop a plea" on a known suicide risk over a victimless crime is reckless, negligent, and unprofessional.
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This was originally posted on ThinkProgress but I will post it here to put that 35 years into perspective for those who don't quite get it. He also was reported to have refused the plea bargain so the full book would have been thrown at him so to speak.
Manslaughter: Federal law provides that someone who kills another human being “[u]pon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion” faces a maximum of 10 years in prison if subject to federal jurisdiction. The lesser crime of involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of only six years.
Bank Robbery: A person who “by force and violence, or by intimidation” robs a bank faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. If the criminal “assaults any person, or puts in jeopardy the life of any person by the use of a dangerous weapon or device,” this sentence is upped to a maximum of 25 years.
Selling Child Pornography: The maximum prison sentence for a first-time offender who “knowingly sells or possesses with intent to sell” child pornography in interstate commerce is 20 years. Significantly, the only way to produce child porn is to sexually molest a child, which means that such a criminal is literally profiting off of child rape or sexual abuse.
Knowingly Spreading AIDS: A person who “after testing positive for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and receiving actual notice of that fact, knowingly donates or sells, or knowingly attempts to donate or sell, blood, semen, tissues, organs, or other bodily fluids for use by another, except as determined necessary for medical research or testing” faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.
Selling Slaves: Under federal law, a person who willfully sells another person “into any condition of involuntary servitude” faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, although the penalty can be much higher if the slaver’s actions involve kidnapping, sexual abuse or an attempt to kill.
Helping al-Qaeda Develop A Nuclear Weapon: A person who “willfully participates in or knowingly provides material support or resources . . . to a nuclear weapons program or other weapons of mass destruction program of a foreign terrorist power, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be imprisoned for not more than 20 years.”
Violence At International Airports: Someone who uses a weapon to “perform[] an act of violence against a person at an airport serving international civil aviation that causes or is likely to cause serious bodily injury” faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years if their actions do not result in a death.
When I see stories like this, I'm glad that in Canada at least, we do not vote for sheriff, crown prosecutors (aka district attorneys), dog catchers, nor judges.
It seems that leads to a spiralling who's-toughest-on-crime "arms race" which goes beyond reason fairly quickly.
(Yes, I know that higher-level judges are appointed in USA.)
Really? So was St. Jude's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?
Was anyone found guilty of anything? "St. Jude officials said they weren’t admitting liability"
How about GlaxoSmithKline?
But hey, at least someone was found guilty this time. His name was SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc. I don't think he had to serve any time in prison, though.
Or Forest Laboratories?
Someone was found guilty this time, too. His name was Forest Laboratories. No time served in prison, although there was one felony count - lying to FDA officials.
You know, if I squint really hard, I think I can see the impression left by the book that Ortiz threw at Mr. Forest Laboratories and Mr. SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc.
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I've read that he was offered a six month sentence in a plea bargain. Rather than take that offer (which would have given him maybe four to five months in a minimum security facility
Here is a case that expresses the duality of the situation: the judge went far above the prosecutors' recommendations. So. Once you plead guilty to 17 felonies the prosecutor's promise is no guarantee - but there will of course be no appeal. And the sentence in that case, 25 years, was for a myriad of offenses: robbery, attempted murder, kidnapping and so on was less that Ortiz prosecutor proposed for Aaron if he was put to the work of actually trying the case.
Six months offer for 17 felonies would just stoke the fires of outrage. 12 days each? So there was not ever an actual federal case in the lot? This, if true, would be an admission that they were oppressing him without due cause. Of course, there would be no record of it anyway and if were weren't actually involved in the case - say, the US Attorney's husband, we would have no way to know. Him I don't believe.
Not that it matters at all. As another one of Mrs. Ortiz's victims discovered, once they have you in the system they never let you go.
You apologists for this horrifically broken system need to get a grip. This is outrageous.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You do realise radio DJ's are far more harmless than prosecutors?
Did you know that the Rawandan genocide was organised and it's implementation coordinated via (religious) radio DJ's?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is intended to be informational, and I'm happy to be corrected in outline or points by prosecutors out there...
The best current practice for prosecutors is to file all possible charges that can be filed for a single crime, and then hope one or more sticks when the case is presented to a jury.
It should be one crime, one charge, but that's not required by law, so they interpret this type as shotgunning as within their requirement t prosecute to the full extent of the law. Don't like it? Change the law. Your congress-critter won't change the law? Change congress-critters -- this you CAN do.
The prosecutorial carrot: When they know that they are being a dick, they typically offer a deal, which always requires a guilty plea, but which may only involve a fine and/or a suspended sentence + parole. The actual resulting penalty can be negotiated down, but the plea is always non-negotiable.
The prosecutorial stick: We will prosecute you on all charges, and ask for the penalties to be applied consecutively. You should be out about the time Moller Air Cars are in widespread use, i.e. past the end of your life.
The only question the prosecutor owes us an answer to at this point is whether or not they were aware of the depression, and declined to enforce a suicide watch. If so, that is criminal negligence, malfeasance of office, involuntary manslaughter, and -- well, whatever litany of charges the prosecutor that charges them thinks can be made to stick, for the one crime of not setting a suicide watch on a known suicide risk.
It's a game of chicken, and if neither side blinks, then it goes to trial, and a judge informs and instructs the jury on matters of law, and the jury gets to decide.
When it goes to the jury, then
where the justice system can, via the jury, decide if the statutory to be applied to a person they have found to be guilty of one or more of the charges is unreasonable. If they do, then they can vote to find the defendant not guilty, regardless of technical guilt, in order to prevent the enforcement of the statutory penalties, over which the judge has very little control, beyond imposing them and then either subtracting out time served, to nullify them, or suspending the sentence. At which point there may be judicially or statutorily imposed parole on the suspended sentence, which the judge can waive in the first case, or which the judge can also suspend, in the second case.
Either way, there are plenty of options apart from taking the deal: (1) run - worked for Assange, (2) off the prosecutor - a bit extreme, but less so than offing yourself, (3) go to trial and win, (4) attempt to negotiate the deal lower, then attempt to obtain a sentence of time served or a suspended sentence, (6) go to trial and lose, but file an immediate appeal, requesting suspension of the sentence pending the outcome of the appeal, (7) attempt to delay the trial until the prosecutor can be thrown out by an election/recall election thanks to political activists on Slashdot and elsewhere, (...) ...
The point is, he was by no means at the end of his rope, and it had to be the depression or other mental health issues attributable to Swartz himself, since this was not a forced check leading to a checkmate, and the game was by no means over.
The problem of prosecutorial overreach (disproportionate charges) is not remotely special to the Aaron Swartz case; it happens millions of times every year across this country, in fact in every criminal case that occurs. What is it now, 95% of all criminal cases and imprisonments fail to go to a jury trial? That's because the prosecutors can pile on centuries-worth of charges without any check or restraint, and the expected value of any jury trial becomes automatically negative (i.e., plea bargain at terms dictated by the prosecutor). I think it's close to the top problem with the USA; it's directly the cause of us having the highest incarceration rate in the world, ever in history. Every time someone talks about laws as "tools" for police and prosecutors it's code-language for that fact of prosecutors can charge anyone they take a disliking to with centuries of possible charges to crush them, economically and spiritually.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
In case you missed it...JSTOR, the injured party in question, asked them to drop the case.
Charging people with felonies when the victim said "no dude, it's cool, no harm no foul" shows a stunning lack of discretion.
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US Federal prosecutors have a vast array of methods they can employ to make it difficult for a defendant to exercise his rights.
I would argue that it is even worse that they are not compelled to bring charges against anyone breaking the law.
They could decide not to go after you, and that's that (comes up a lot when trying to bring charges against police officers or other prosecutors). The fact that they can pick and choose who gets charged in the first place is even worse than their ability to overreach when they do bring charges.
“As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.
I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law.
As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.”
"JSTOR's mission is to foster widespread access to the world's body of scholarly knowledge".
These are not songs pirated for someone's amusement and profit, taking cocaine away from needy media executives. The very purpose of writing them in the first place is to put them in "the pool of human knowledge" that others may learn what they have, test them, and build upon them - that progress might advance for all mankind. Not in "forever less a day" when the copyright expires, but immediately upon publication. This nonprofit organization purports to want them disseminated, not to serve as the gatekeeper that holds them reserved for a privileged and wealthy few.
So. No wonder they didn't want Aaron prosecuted. His proposal was to actually help them fulfill their own mission. In death he has laid their hypocrisy bare.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I just saw it here: ...Prosecution of the case continued, with charges of wire fraud and computer fraud, carrying a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million.[50][51] One of Swartz's lawyers revealed prosecutors told him two days before Swartz’s death that "Swartz would have to spend six months in prison and plead guilty to [all] 13 charges if he wanted to avoid going to trial."[52] After Swartz's death, his attorney Marty Weinberg told press that he "nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time", but that bargain failed because "JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not."[53]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
Here are the links 50 and 51:
http://crln.acrl.org/content/72/9/534.full
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-government-ups-felony-count-jstoraaron-swartz-case-four-to-thirteen.shtml
True, he might not have gotten the full 35. I would even feel fine placing a $20 bet that he would get a shorter sentence. For him the stakes were much higher. To me the threat of such a sentence seems like a form of psychological warfare.
Crimes against one's person, and crimes against a nebulous - at best intellectual property concept are and should be treated very differently.
It must be really hard to get around in a world when you can only see black and white and nothing else.
In what way does this case parallel a battered spouse situation?
Who had more money: JSTOR/MIT or Defendant?
Who had more power: JSTOR/MIT or Defendant?
How bruised was JSTOR/MIT by Swartz' actions?
What kind of future threat to JSTOR/MIT's physical safety did Swartz represent?
Seriously man -- your comment is a symptom of what's wrong with the Feds -- no sense of proportion, no sense of reality, no sense of fairness. It's either black or white.
But beware -- when you start to lock up people for the rest of their lives based on trivial things, those people might think stuff along the lines of "what the hell, might as well bring a gun and shoot someone if I'm caught making this photocopy of a magazine because if I'm going to do that kind of time, might as well do a crime to fit it."
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
They may have offered six months, but that doesn't mean he would have only spent six months in jail because the judge can ignore the Prosecutor's agreement and give 5 years per felony. They wanted him to plead guilty to 13 felonies.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
They're members of the Obama administration.
Can we maybe not politicize everything along party lines, and instead simply recognize injustice when we see it, and demand justice whenever it's needed?
She failed to see that 50 years in an American Federal Prison wasn't a fitting punishment for this person/crime.
Even the injured party didn't think so but she bullied them into pressing full charges.
Just to make herself look good.
No sig today...
"Hey, you've done nothing wrong, but you could still end up in jail for a long time. How about only going to jail for 4 years?"
Yeah, sounds about fair.