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Prosecutor as bully

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Re: Prosecutor as bully

#211

Post by Spooky23 »

andrewtbham wrote: post #99
temphn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously very important to stay on the bright white side of legal here, as we are dealing with a prosecutorial bully. Emailing her directly is unlikely to produce results and likely to get your name on some kind of terrorist watch list. But going to her superiors and the Boston media to call for her resignation in disgrace over an overzealous prosecution is the right tactic. 0) Start with background: http://www…

I do like these tactics and... I am in favor of naming and shaming. I think she should be made the poster child for overzealous prosecution of a outdated law. However, it is a story that could serve a larger purpose than just ruining this woman's career. I would like to this effort put into something more constructive like the decriminalization of copyright infringement. It could be relegated to a civil issue, especi…

You need to understand that US Attorney is a stepping-stone job, especially if she is very vocal in her role. Ego-maniacs like Rudy Giuliani use it to bypass the normal political machinery to get a mayorship, congressional post or cabinet/justice appointment. Others use it as a path to the ultimate job -- lifetime prestige and employment as a Federal judge.

"Naming and shaming" gives her name recognition and boosts her credentials as "tough". Any publicity is good publicity for a politician.

Instead, you and your friends should be asking the Senators and Governor of Massachusetts (aka the gatekeepers to this person's career path) why someone who demonstrates such contempt for the concept of justice is representing the United States government. You should ask President Obama and the Attorney General why their administration tolerates that contempt.

If you want the law changed, you need to attack those who are perpetrating injustice.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#212

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rprasad wrote: post #193
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're lucky we can get this kind of outrage built up when it is, and then fix it for everyone. These laws get passed when the innocent victim is a sympathetic white girl, why can't they get repealed when the innocent accused is a sympathetic white boy?

Whether Aaron is a "sympathetic" defendant depends strongly on your point of view. All the laws named after little white girls are named after dead little white girls who were the victims of brutal crimes. Aaron is the alleged perpetrator of a potentially serious felony. Moreover, he is the perpetrator of a crime that most people cannot distinguish from hacking (because unlike the HN crowd, most people are not techno…

I don't think you're getting the idea here. We have internets now. The prosecutor says Aaron was a bad man. Everyone who knows anything about him -- and that's tons of people -- says completely the opposite. The New York Times is writing largely sympathetic stories about him. This isn't 1950 anymore. You don't get to control the public discourse just because you have a suit and an office.

It doesn't matter what they say he did, it matters what we say he did. And we say he did good. Which we can get people to believe, because we're right, and there are millions of us.

This whole "tech people are irrelevant and no one listens to them" meme dates back to the 1990s before tech people were relevant and people started listening to them, and before there were millions of us instead of thousands.

There are a lot of us. We're generally pretty smart. We control a lot of important stuff. We can fix serious problems if we collectively set out to do it.

You can say "politics doesn't work that way" a hundred times, but politics works the way that people make it work. And we're people.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#213

Post by CamperBob2 »

pekk wrote: post #162
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, ... This is Timothy McVeigh thinking, and it makes you a loser just like it did to McVeigh. You can never kill or destroy enough people to defeat Washington, D.C. To win you have to think like Osama bin Laden: turn the system against itself. Wholesale, not retail. Scale up, not one off. TSA, not EFF.

Carmen Ortiz is not a building full of civilians, including children in a daycare. And a civil ending to a career for inappropriate and unjust use of power is not a murder or bombing. It's appalling that your criticism of Timothy McVeigh is that he wasn't enough like Osama bin Laden. Do you really think either one of these should serve as a model?

Do you really think either one of these should serve as a model?

(Shrug) bin Laden got shit done. McVeigh did not.

They both ended up exactly where they deserved, but you can't ignore the fact that one of them was an effective political strategist while the other one was nothing but a plain old mass murderer.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#214

Post by jlgreco »

ceol wrote: post #185
jlgreco wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, that may not be true. I don't know. What I do know is that the issue is larger than Aaron himself.

If it's larger than Aaron, then people shouldn't be using his death as the core reason for their crusade.

Absolute rubbish. Why should we not use individuals as catalysts for greater change? Doing so has a long, successful, and proud history in this country. Hell, it predates the country.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#215

Post by btilly »

rprasad wrote: post #183
lancefisher wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a link: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat... And a second petition to pardon Aaron: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/posthumously-pardo...

The second petition will never be granted. I can say this with certainty because it is legally impossible to grant a pardon when someone has not been convicted (or plead guilty to) a crime to finality (i.e., the exhaustion of appeals). As with the Enron fellow who died during his appeals, Aaron will never legally be guilty of whatever it was he was specifically charged with because his case was never adjudicated to f…

it is legally impossible to grant a pardon when someone has not been convicted (or plead guilty to) a crime to finality (i.e., the exhaustion of appeals).

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Proclamation_4311 is a famous example disproving that.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#216

Post by jlgreco »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #213
pekk wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carmen Ortiz is not a building full of civilians, including children in a daycare. And a civil ending to a career for inappropriate and unjust use of power is not a murder or bombing. It's appalling that your criticism of Timothy McVeigh is that he wasn't enough like Osama bin Laden. Do you really think either one of these should serve as a model?

Do you really think either one of these should serve as a model? (Shrug) bin Laden got shit done. McVeigh did not. They both ended up exactly where they deserved, but you can't ignore the fact that one of them was an effective political strategist while the other one was nothing but a plain old mass murderer.

Wasn't bin Laden's issue the American involvement/support of Israel? I'm not sure you can say he got shit done anymore than McVeigh did.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#217

Post by PrudenceYuris »

adammil wrote: post #136

I created a White House petition for this, please sign it: Terminate prosecutor Carmen M. Ortiz for overzealous prosecution of Aaron Swartz, leading to his suicide. http://wh.gov/EO5n

Duplicate. This one has 1500 signatures already: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat...

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#218

Post by CamperBob2 »

jlgreco wrote: post #216
CamperBob2 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think either one of these should serve as a model? (Shrug) bin Laden got shit done. McVeigh did not. They both ended up exactly where they deserved, but you can't ignore the fact that one of them was an effective political strategist while the other one was nothing but a plain old mass murderer.

Wasn't bin Laden's issue the American involvement/support of Israel? I'm not sure you can say he got shit done anymore than McVeigh did.

Actually, I believe that the biggest bee in bin Laden's bonnet was the Americans' use of Saudi territory for military bases. The story of the US withdrawal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_S... ) reminds me a lot of the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis, where the US quietly agreed to withdraw similar missiles from Turkey and Italy.

To the extent that bin Laden's ultimate goal was to cause severe financial damage to US interests, there's no question but that he succeeded grandly. Sure, 99% of the damage that resulted from 9/11 was self-inflicted by the Bush administration, but the outcome was the same as if bin Laden had destroyed trillions of dollars in US wealth himself.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#219

Post by gburt »

rprasad wrote: post #70
temphn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naming and shaming Carmen M. Ortiz for destroying the life of a young man is exactly what is necessary. She brought 13 felony counts against him for downloading articles that should be freely available, after JSTOR itself had dropped the charges. Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, in the same way that she surely thought her prosecution of S…

Or, you know, you could just call your local Congressperson and complain. This is far more likely to have a direct impact on her job (performance of, or continued employment) than some random internet "naming and shaming." It is also far more likely to bring about the structural changes necessary to prevent this from happening again. ...as they have disabled the voice of the people by routing around jury trials. Aaro…

It's not just getting her fired, but also the public shaming as an end in itself. Political figures, who are in a position of an incredible amount of power/leverage over the rest of us, need to know that they must do only what "the public" thinks is acceptable and not whatever day-to-day tirade they get off on.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#220

Post by Daniel_Newby »

pekk wrote: post #162
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, ... This is Timothy McVeigh thinking, and it makes you a loser just like it did to McVeigh. You can never kill or destroy enough people to defeat Washington, D.C. To win you have to think like Osama bin Laden: turn the system against itself. Wholesale, not retail. Scale up, not one off. TSA, not EFF.

Carmen Ortiz is not a building full of civilians, including children in a daycare. And a civil ending to a career for inappropriate and unjust use of power is not a murder or bombing. It's appalling that your criticism of Timothy McVeigh is that he wasn't enough like Osama bin Laden. Do you really think either one of these should serve as a model?

Ortiz is a generic, replaceable cog in the prosecution-prison complex. She was not "inappropriate", she was doing her job exactly like the American public wanted her to. You could no more end her career over this than you could keep Obama from being reelected. Killing her wouldn't even have any effect—another cog would be slotted into the case before her body was even in the ground. Even blowing up the entire Federal building where she works would be useless, they would just fly in replacements from the hundreds of other offices.

That's the lesson of Timothy McVeigh: if blowing up an entire building full of your opponents has no effect, then writing a stern letter to your Congressman is laughable.

As far as bin Laden being a good role model, he won didn't he? He got inside Washinton, D.C.'s decision loop and systematically turned it against its own interests. Trillions wasted on war, distracted from fixing economic problems, Turkey handed to the mullahs on a silver platter, occupation of ungovernable territories, etc.

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