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Jeremy Hammond of LulzSec Pleads Guilty To Stratfor Attack
eldavojohn writes "After facing 30 years to life imprisonment and pleading not guilty to charges last year, Jeremy Hammond has pleaded guilty to his alleged involvement in Anonymous' hacking of Stratfor. The self proclaimed hacktivist member of LulzSec, who has compared his situation to that of the late Aaron Swartz, explained his reasoning in his plea: 'Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. In keeping with that, I do not want to hide what I did or to shy away from my actions. This non-cooperating plea agreement frees me to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline. During the past 15 months I have been relatively quiet about the specifics of my case as I worked with my lawyers to review the discovery and figure out the best legal strategy. There were numerous problems with the government's case, including the credibility of FBI informant Hector Monsegur. However, because prosecutors stacked the charges with inflated damages figures, I was looking at a sentencing guideline range of over 30 years if I lost at trial. I have wonderful lawyers and an amazing community of people on the outside who support me. None of that changes the fact that I was likely to lose at trial. But, even if I was found not guilty at trial, the government claimed that there were eight other outstanding indictments against me from jurisdictions scattered throughout the country. If I had won this trial I would likely have been shipped across the country to face new but similar charges in a different district. The process might have repeated indefinitely. ... I did what I believe is right.'"
It's not new in the least.
It's a standard feature of the legal system. You can claim many things, they can even be mutually exclusive, and the court case is there to check which ones hold up.
It applies to both sides, as well. Defendants routinely claim that a) they didn't do it, b) they were intoxicated when doing it and c) it was an accident. The geek in you winces that these can not all be true, so how can you claim them all - but to a lawyer, that's not even worth mentioning.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Pleading "not guilty" is a "plea" to charges laid and read. It is not a statement of facts. It is a formal notification that you are going to make a case for consideration by the Court. On some charges, in a number of jurisdictions, you are not even allowed to plea other than "not guilty". Pleading is not and cannot be either a truth or lie.
So, when did he lie?