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Prosecutor as bully

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Re: Prosecutor as bully

#231

Post by kaonashi »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #194
Homunculiheaded wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stealing" in the sense of depriving you access to the documents should be prohibited, but I see no problem if someone requested you immediately copy all of your research. In fact this is exactly the case with anyone working directly for the federal government, doing research or otherwise. You're told in no uncertain terms that at any moment information on your work laptop can be FOIA'd in which case you will have to…

> I see no problem if someone requested you immediately copy all of your research. Academia can be extremely competitive. Like, if a competing lab got ahold even of the title of your upcoming paper, they would and do rush to duplicate your results, and try to publish before you to get the scoop. For that reason, I don't know if open access to everyone's hard drives would work.

Perhaps it should be more cooperative.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#232

Post by gbhn »

mikeash wrote: post #123
anon3456 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you prefer it be, 50/50? Would you prefer the US charge more innocent people with crimes to bring down the conviction rate? If someone is formally charged with a federal felony, that means they have been indicted by a federal Grand Jury; i.e., a majority of the 23 Grand Jurors felt that there is probable cause for charging the defendant(s) with the alleged offense(s). People indicted by Grand Juries should…

It seems pointless to talk about conviction rates in isolation. In a perfect world, prosecutors would bring charges exactly when they had enough evidence to prove that the suspect committed the crime, and they would be found guilty at trial due to that evidence. One could also imagine a horribly imperfect world where prosecutors routinely charge innocents and achieve convictions in every case regardless due to kangar…

Perhaps the triangulation with dismissal rates here is informative -- cases the end in dismissal sound like they are a sizeable portion of those that don't get pled. I don't know the exact numbers in our world, but that number ought to be virtually insignificant in the 'great' world.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#233

Post by mscarborough »

Nobody killed Aaron Swartz except Aaron Swartz. Not the prosecutor, nor the legal system, nor the copyright system. Completely useless as they all are.

It's absolutely horrible how this happened and that we lost such a light in the web community. But stop the myth making and pretending that you cared the whole time, when really nobody did.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#234

Post by darkarmani »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #220
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?

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…

Why wouldn't the replacement cog think twice about over zealous prosecution?

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#235

Post by darkarmani »

mscarborough wrote: post #233

Nobody killed Aaron Swartz except Aaron Swartz. Not the prosecutor, nor the legal system, nor the copyright system. Completely useless as they all are. It's absolutely horrible how this happened and that we lost such a light in the web community. But stop the myth making and pretending that you cared the whole time, when really nobody did.

Threatened with 35 years of jail time...

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#236

Post by darkarmani »

Benferhat wrote: post #36
pbateman wrote: post #2

From the link in the article: Depending on how many of the counts Swartz is found guilty of, the sentence could conceivably total 50+ years and fine in the area of $4 million. What an absurd and unreasonable level of punishment. Carmen Ortiz, the prosecutor who was behind this[1] needs to be publicly shamed. [1] (source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-c... )

The prosecutor's job is to charge you with the violation of every statute that the evidence indicates you violated, and use that breadth of charges as leverage in a plea negotiation. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Isn't part of the game political? By shaming her, you are playing the game.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#237

Post by darkarmani »

rprasad wrote: post #192
PrudenceYuris wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her entire career, professional circle, and reputational supports have made an error in backing her, and they need to hear that directly. She hounded someone to suicide, and the repercussions for that are light if they are limited to ending her career.

I don't know how much more clearly I can state this: Most criminal defendants do not kill themselves. It was Aaron's choice to take his life, not hers. Her professional and personal contacts will never agree with you that she hounded someone to suicide. Telling them "she did wrong" when it is not clear that she did anything out of the ordinary in this case will have zero effect on getting her "shamed" and will have n…

> Going after her without changing the laws will not work.

Making it a political liability for prosecutors to act a certain way will surely influence things.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#238

Post by vermontdevil »

GabrielF00 wrote: post #222
daniel-cussen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aaron had the option of going to trial. It was his constitutional right. He chose to kill himself instead. It was not a real option. He had run out of money for an expensive, complex case. He was sure to lose.

Robert Morris created the first worm on the Internet and was the first person prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was convicted and sentenced to probation. He's now a tenured MIT professor and was a co-founder of Y Combinator. For someone of Aaron's talent and reputation there is no reason that he could not have gotten past a felony conviction and lived a successful life. I can only interpret Lessig…

People handle adversity differently. It seems Aaron had internal pressures and this trial had definitely increased these pressures.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#239

Post by pyre »

GabrielF00 wrote: post #222
daniel-cussen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aaron had the option of going to trial. It was his constitutional right. He chose to kill himself instead. It was not a real option. He had run out of money for an expensive, complex case. He was sure to lose.

Robert Morris created the first worm on the Internet and was the first person prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was convicted and sentenced to probation. He's now a tenured MIT professor and was a co-founder of Y Combinator. For someone of Aaron's talent and reputation there is no reason that he could not have gotten past a felony conviction and lived a successful life. I can only interpret Lessig…

Aaron sounds like an idealist in an extreme sense. He probably did not feel that what he did was wrong, and that accepting the label of 'felon' was an affront to the truth.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#240

Post by ceol »

jlgreco wrote: post #214
ceol wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You shouldn't do it the day after he died. You should mourn him and let his loved ones mourn him.

And what part of forcing a single attorney out of her job is "greater change"? What part of that is being "proud"?

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