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Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

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Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#141

Post by mpyne »

marshray wrote: post #137
res0nat0r wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't going to get 30 years. See the other top HN post right now about he could have plea-bargained for 6 months.

He could only get the 6 month (rather than 35 years) prison sentence by waiving his right to a fair trial. So exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right would result in a seventy-fold increase in his worst-case outcome. In 2009 fully 96% of criminal cases in our Federal court system resulted in a conviction. http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=7... This situation would be absurd if it weren't…

> He could only get the 6 month (rather than 35 years) prison sentence by waiving his right to a fair trial.

If he willingly engaged in a jury trial and somehow still got convicted, with a strict judge, and a jury that hates him, and an incompetent defense, he still wouldn't get anything approaching a 35-year sentence.

Is it really too much to ask to not use hyperbole for matters as serious as this? You could just as well be saying that the taxpayers are paying for Sandra Fluke to have sex.

Please, please, I'm begging you all: By setting up an echo chamber and inventing your own "facts" and then taking action based on that made-up dream world, you're just as wrong as "the other side".

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#142

Post by gbhn »

mcantelon wrote: post #96
rhizome wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure she can only be fired by Obama, but unfortunately I'm not confident "prosecutorial abuse" is a strong enough reason for him to do so.

Obama could ask her to resign then there would be no need for public justification. I doubt it'll happen though. Doing so wouldn't score enough political points, given it's not a sufficiently mainstream issue, to make it worth Obama's while.

It's way worse than that. Obama's track record on abusing DoJ power against citizens is well established. Indefinite detention. Whistleblower prosecutions. Bradley Manning. The list is not short.

It'd be great to see the president forced to disown Ortiz; perhaps it'd make the rest of the DoJ afraid he wouldn't back them up on their similar adventures. Realistically, though, this is not (yet) a large political threat to Obama.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#143

Post by mpyne »

zzzeek wrote: post #138
slapshot wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A guilty verdict from a jury is not an automatic maximum sentence. The mostly-mandatory Federal Sentencing Guidelines would have called for an actual sentence of 4-10 months in this case. In the federal system, broad classes of crimes ("murder", "robbery", "wire fraud") have been assigned maximum sentences. For example, under no conditions can a sentence for wire fraud exceed 20 years (you get to the theoretical max…

That's all great information but it goes contrary to the narrative coming from all sources I've seen, including Lessig himself who was involved with the case. His own post ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/aaron-swartz-s... ) cites a figure of "50 years" based on the number of felony counts ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-gov... ) , and states the "government continued to push…

> If these numbers are really all just meaningless and in "reality" he was really only looking at...a year? why is it that nobody, even sources like Lessig, seem to be saying this.

Because it goes in opposition to the worldview they're trying to push...? Everyone has a bias, you, me, Dr. Lessig, aaronsw, the prosecutors, EVERYONE.

It's like when the music/movie industry tries to claim that an illegally copied media file costs them hundreds of thousands in damages.

In this case you could theoretically get to 35+ by taking up all the charges, handing down sequential sentences (as opposed to the more-normal concurrent sentences), and somehow making all of those individual sentences go to the upper range of the permitted scale.

I and a few others have been trying to point out that 35 years in prison was never an actual option for some days now but I think it's kind of gotten lost in the storm...

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#144

Post by mpyne »

npsimons wrote: post #24
numbsafari wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Lawrence Lessig's essay titled "Prosecutor as Bully", he writes the following in his last paragraph: Somehow, we need to get beyond the "I'm right so I'm right to nuke you" ethics that dominates our time. If that's the case, threatening "vigilante justice" based on 25,000 signatures would seem to indicate those who want to see action against the prosecutors have failed to learn that lesson and are only interested…

Let's try to eliminate the equivocating, shall we? One the one hand, we have someone who was being threatened with being imprisoned for half his life, for doing something that couldn't have possibly merited that kind of retribution. On the other hand, we have a person being threatened with being removed from an position of power so that she (hopefully) can't abuse power over others again. She most likely will be able…

He was never in danger of being locked away for half his life even on the revised trumped-up charges. Please read http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5063435 as it's a well-sourced comment, unlike mine.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#145

Post by mpyne »

mediacrisis wrote: post #82
res0nat0r wrote: post #73

Why is there not this type of outpouring of rage and internet hate the last few days for someone who is seriously being railroaded: Bradley Manning. This is a person who has been locked up into solitary for months now and is being treated very inhumanely. Is it because he hasn't written any Python libraries and isn't visible in Silicon Valley?

Not that I agree with Bradley Mannings punishment, but I think a key difference is that he was not a civilian.

And unlike normal whistleblowers, he wasn't even aware of the contents of the vast majority of classified material he exfiltrated.

Even at the level of "oh those are just diplomatic cables", those cables could just as easily have been "we need to focus on these nuclear weapons assemblies in Fooistan next" and tip off Islamist elements as to where to find their first dirty bomb, as of gossip about Berlusconi.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#146

Post by mpyne »

tkahn6 wrote: post #130
glyphobet wrote: post #128

It is a shame that the petition to pardon Swartz has 1/10th of the signatures that the petition to fire Ortiz has. Let's advocate for a government that forgives (alleged) crimes as strongly as we advocate for a government that punishes people like Ortiz. http://twitpic.com/bvjjvz https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/posthumously-pardo...

Swartz is dead, so I don't know what pardoning him now would accomplish other than securing a useless symbolic 'victory'.

He can't even be pardoned; the charges were dropped. Even if the charges were somehow still in effect, the proper thing to do would be to have the charges dropped entirely. A pardon implies guilt, it simply commutes the sentence of the convicted.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#147

Post by TheAmazingIdiot »

georgemcbay wrote: post #11
uptown wrote: post #5

Am I the only one that finds these petitions pointless? They marginalize any real activism down to just some signatures by loosely-connected individuals and really just provide a forum for speaking to your elected officials - something they're supposed to be there for anyway - in a format that has none of the financial "umph" that lobbyists bring.

They aren't inherently totally pointless. If they reach the 25,000 "signatures" required to trigger a response, that becomes somewhat of a news item more likely to spill into the mainstream news, thus drawing some attention to whatever the issue is, which is always somewhat helpful. But certainly they are less effective than real protest, or real physical letters sent to lawmakers, so if done in lieu of those things…

Yeah. Tell me about how that death star is going to go again?

That's why these petitions are an utter joke.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#148

Post by marshray »

mpyne wrote: post #141
marshray wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He could only get the 6 month (rather than 35 years) prison sentence by waiving his right to a fair trial. So exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right would result in a seventy-fold increase in his worst-case outcome. In 2009 fully 96% of criminal cases in our Federal court system resulted in a conviction. http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=7... This situation would be absurd if it weren't…

> He could only get the 6 month (rather than 35 years) prison sentence by waiving his right to a fair trial. If he willingly engaged in a jury trial and somehow still got convicted, with a strict judge, and a jury that hates him, and an incompetent defense, he still wouldn't get anything approaching a 35-year sentence. Is it really too much to ask to not use hyperbole for matters as serious as this? You could just as…

> he still wouldn't get anything approaching a 35-year sentence.

You don't know that.

As tptacek and an actual computer criminal defense lawyer points out:

Granick: Important to remember much lower burden on prosecution at sentencing; “reasonable” loss claims on “preponderance of evidence”. Net-net: If charged with 13 felonies, you can’t lose on ANY, because even if acquitted on 12, they strike back at sentencing.

From this I conclude the game-theoretic payoff matrix is the message: don't bet on a fair trial, even if you're completely innocent. Prisoner's Dilemma indeed.

ref: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/291344549601742848 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/291344675305037825

> You could just as well be saying that the taxpayers are paying for Sandra Fluke to have sex.

Now who's talking hyperbole again?

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#150

Post by askimto »

res0nat0r wrote: post #63
jivatmanx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He refused to surrender, so it's fair to go nuclear?

He could have either taken 6 months and the charge, or the maximum sentence. Note: This happens every single day for all types of crimes all around the US.

But this wasn't like every other crime was it? It was political. There is NO guarantee that he'd have gotten 6 months. NONE.
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