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30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

theintercept.com

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Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#231

Post by mikem170 »

Auracle wrote: post #191
anigbrowl wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The different scale of intention was to overturn the results of a federal general election, effectively a coup to seize back control over the government. I can see why you consider the incident in Texas to be terrorism, but you want to ignore the entire point of the J6 event and pretend it was just some normal event where a few participants got a little out of hand? Get real.

Alright, so all of these die hard Republicans had a plan to do a coup...and none of them brought guns to the actual coup? Really? It was stupid for many reasons, but it was a riot, not some preplanned ambush with weapons like is being talked about in the OP.

There were lots of Jan 6 weapons related convictions:

"180 defendants were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon, which includes firearms and other types of weapons." [0]

What you described as a riot is considered by others to be part of a "fake electors" plot, to keep Trump in power after he lost the election [1], a plot which Pence didn't go along with. Trump even tweeted that day about it:

"If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency." [2]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-capitol-attack-rioters...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2...

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#232

Post by mathisfun123 »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #161
will4274 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough to convince a jury of their peers.

Question begging, basically. The contention is that they were railroaded and maliciously overprosecuted, it's hard for the answer to be "enough to convince a jury of their peers."

99% of people on this forum (and elsewhere) understand neither the phrase "begging the question" nor the logical fallacy (petitio principii). And thus people are imprisoned. It's sad but this is where we are (and probably always have been).

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#233

Post by tkel »

daedrdev wrote: post #32
xrd wrote: post #3

Up until now these crazy cases have been rejected by the courts. But this feels like a crack in the dam. A judge actually sentenced someone to 30 years for hiding zines, zines that had been published for years. This was under the pretense hiding those zines was hiding evidence of criminality. And the criminality was worth 75 years. For someone who was at a protest where a federal agent was shot, but was not the shoot…

If you think that this was a protest then yeah it's worrying. The feds case, which they did win convictions based on, was that they were terrorists who set off fireworks to lure police into an ambush, and there weren't more casualties because one of the members shot early and only injured one cop. An accessory to this who hid evidence is also part of the crime in the Feds case Is this embellished by the Feds? I think…

"Lure police into an ambush" is quite a stretch. It's quite normal to do noise demonstrations outside jails/prisons to show solidarity with the captives, the captives will often times knock on the windows to communicate back. In fact there were noise demonstrations outside the Delaney Hall ICE jail in New Jersey just this month, which you may have heard about. The mischaracterization of fireworks as "explosives" is also a huge stretch by the government in order to pursue their antifa conspiracy.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#234

Post by bandofthehawk »

stevenwoo wrote: post #159
expedition32 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chilling effect on demonstrations. If you attend one were someone starts shooting you become an accomplice. And ofcourse this also leaves the door open for a "false flag" incident.

Unless one is a right wing protestor like Kyle Rittenhouse.

[flagged]

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#235

Post by BeetleB »

vel0city wrote: post #223
bawolff wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's say someone is driving 35MPH. They think "oh snap, I think the speed limit is 30MPH here!". The posted speed limit is actually 40MPH. There is a difference between incorrect belief in what the law is vs incorrect belief in what actions you are taking. Although maybe that is not the most compelling. If you see the speed limit is 40, but you want to go faster so you hit the gas until you are going 60 and then b…

Intending to murder someone is often directly a crime though, so yes. And murdering people is illegal. Moving some magazines isn't normally illegal. I wouldn't normally assume having some magazines is evidence of a crime. And if they are, what crime was owning the magazines involved in? That you happen to read some of the same articles as someone else who committed a crime? Is sharing the same books as others now imp…

> Intending to murder someone is often directly a crime though

Not at all.

Committing an act with the intent to murder is a crime. Actual intent alone isn't.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#236

Post by AdieuToLogic »

rileymat2 wrote: post #224
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being aware that he was moving the zines to obstruct a federal felony investigation is surely relevant. Intent is an important aspect of crime. A sentence of 30 years in prison for obstructing an investigation is excessive, especially when compared to the "base offense level" of Involuntary Manslaughter (section 2A1.4 found here[0]) being between 12 and 22, roughly translating to between 10 and 51 months in prison[…

Shouldn't the punishment for obstruction, in many cases, be higher than the base offense to prevent that as a default strategy to beat the base offense? Granted, not that much higher, but there is some logic to it being a greater offense.

> Shouldn't the punishment for obstruction, in many cases, be higher than the base offense to prevent that as a default strategy to beat the base offense?

If I am interpreting this question correctly, it assumes the same person whom commits an offense being investigated also obstructs investigation into same. These would be two different offenses and are charged as such AFAIK.

For the situation where one party obstructs an investigation, but is not a party to what is being investigated, then the premise of "a default strategy to beat the base offense" is inapplicable.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#237

Post by tkel »

Chinjut wrote: post #228
thunderfork wrote: post #213

Insane charges, insane justifications, and judging by the comments in this thread, I feel insane for having ever believed in the myth of the "decent conservative".

Hacker News is for people who believe in the hacker ethos "It is immoral to do anything the government takes issue with and you deserve whatever punishment you get for doing so, unless it was breaking regulations to make money, the highest calling".

Also, "It's okay for the government to shoot people, use explosives, kidnap people and put them in cages for their entire lives. But if you try to stop them, you are bad and deserve to be in a cage for your entire life."

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#238

Post by 9x39 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #225
ibejoeb wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

One obvious distinction is that Tarrio was convicted of leading & planning the Proud Boys operation on Jan 6 while this defendant was convicted of moving zines. Tarrio wasn’t at the insurrection on Jan 6 because he’d already been barred from traveling to the city… And he got less of a sentence. I don’t think your argument equating these 2 is arguing what you think it is.

Underselling it by omission - was it intentional?

Zines related to a shootout and murder by an armed group after retrieving them from the home of one of the parties involved, discussing it on a jail call, and placing them in a third person's apartment.

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#239

Post by bandofthehawk »

bluealienpie wrote: post #162
stevenwoo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless one is a right wing protestor like Kyle Rittenhouse.

*Murderer

I guess you don't believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty?

Re: 30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

#240

Post by dwroberts »

Xorakios wrote: post #12

Here's the case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/antifa-cell-members-con... The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation being sought under a federal warrant after being called by his wife and asking him to do so. The warrant was for documentation after the protesters shot fireworks to bring out first responders from the ICE facility, and allegedly one of the group shot a responder in the neck instead of th…

If this was an incident in Europe, comments like this would be talking about how clearly the state is corrupt, it’s account cannot be trusted, and obviously civilisation is collapsing because free speech outside of the US is dead. “You can be arrested for zines!”

Inside the US though? No, clearly the state’s account is definitely accurate, the citizen is obviously guilty, it’s not only correct they are being jailed it is actually good, free speech - oh it’s not relevant because they committed unrelated crimes (we’re told. By the state’s account).

US propaganda/copaganda on its own citizens really is something else to behold

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