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U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

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Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#141

Post by chmike »

newbie12 wrote: post #121
chernevik wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One. It is a very serious mistake to deny someone the right to believe the correctness of their own opinions. Two. People use leverage. They may or may not use it rightly but they do use it. Anyone who cannot set their opinion of the justice of that to one side, and get on to the business of the contest at hand, is not cut out for politics. Such people enter these contests at a great disadvantage and risk getting hur…

Ortiz is an Obama Administration appointee who wants to run for the Massachusetts governorship. She's making this argument to try to salvage her political career...it isn't a courtroom argument and it will be easy for her to trip up, she doesn't understand the dynamics of this firestorm.

As a foreigner (French) I'm surprised that Americans apparently don't get that mixing a career in politic with a career in justice is the open door to abuse, demagogy or conflicts of interests. This should not be allowed or even possible.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#142

Post by silentmars »

As damage control goes, Ortiz's statement is inadequate. There is a well-supported petition calling her out by name to be fired. There are major media outlets openly questioning not only her actions, but the fitness of the entire Justice Department to act appropriately. Not one or two media outlets, but dozens. The situation seems very serious indeed. This is the bloodless, half-assed kind of statement she makes in response? I don't get it.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#143

Post by speleding »

thomasz wrote: post #54
rhizome wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases." Scapegoating Congress now, she is truly shameless in invoking the Nuremberg Defense.

Can we please not Godwin this?

In this case Ortiz "I'm just following orders" warrants a reference to Nuremberg. It's insightful to realise that things can get badly out of hand, even if you follow the letter of the law. Aaron's case proves the point.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#144

Post by Kylekramer »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #137
Kylekramer wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expert witness for Aaron Swartz's defense. If he didn't think he was innocent, he wouldn't have got the paid job or been involved at all.

It doesn't change the fact that Aaron was not convicted of breaking the law. Being charged with a crime does not make you a criminal.

Yes, obviously. I never said it was.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#145

Post by tptacek »

toyg wrote: post #101
tzs wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These two links will clear up a lot of misconceptions you seem to have about this case. http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...

Kerr does a textbook analysis of the facts, ignoring the particularities of this case. Not one but three (!) lawyers picked up Aaron's case, and all three failed to reach a plea bargain -- clearly the prosecution was more "motivated" than usual. Given this fact, the fact that in these circumstances a bargain is not actually binding for the judge, and the other fact that there was no interest in keeping Swartz happy p…

Kerr, who has both prosecuted these kinds of cases and defended them, ignores none of what you're saying. He comes about as close as someone who might in the future need to deal with these specific prosecutors can come to saying that the prosecutors were exceptionally aggressive.

Further, while it is possible that circumstances could arise in which a 4 month plea from Swartz could be ignored by the judge, those circumstances are extremely unlikely. Not only do judges rubber stamp plea deals, but in a case involving 13 felonies, Swartz would very likely have arranged a Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea in which the judge's refusal to accept the plea simply would have resulted in a trial.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#146

Post by rolux »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #140
roguecoder wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2% of American men are currently in jail. Among black men 30 to 34, 7% are currently in jail. We just don't notice the vast injustice of our justice system until we think it might affect us. Attacking a single prosecutor who was doing her job and obeying the law won't change anything. Attacking the laws she enforced will.

>Attacking a single prosecutor who was doing her job and obeying the law won't change anything. I disagree, if Ortiz was looking for a future in politics, she's finished. At the very least, she'll have to change her party affiliation. This is a good thing. Otherwise she could've possibly carried on at a higher level. Although the various public reactions have yet to make any change in law; recent events may discourag…

I agree with your last point.

But just putting a temporary cap on Ortiz' career doesn't seem like a big win to me, in the grand scheme of things. I know nothing about Massachusetts politics. Who knows she's not the "good cop", compared to the person whose career, as a result, will advance faster?

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#147

Post by berkay »

chmike wrote: post #141
newbie12 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ortiz is an Obama Administration appointee who wants to run for the Massachusetts governorship. She's making this argument to try to salvage her political career...it isn't a courtroom argument and it will be easy for her to trip up, she doesn't understand the dynamics of this firestorm.

As a foreigner (French) I'm surprised that Americans apparently don't get that mixing a career in politic with a career in justice is the open door to abuse, demagogy or conflicts of interests. This should not be allowed or even possible.

It is indeed very different than the rest of the world. In US, not only careers in politics and judicial system often mix, but often career in the judicial system IS career in politics directly. Many of the high level positions, district attorneys, judges (not federal) are elected positions, hence by definition political.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#148

Post by arbuge »

I think this release is worded disingenuously. My understanding of this case is that the 6 month offer was only part of the plea deal the prosecutors held out if Aaron didn't go to trial. If he exercised his right to due process and went to trial, he did indeed risk the full 35 year penalty and no such sentence recommendation was on offer.

This is typical of many prosecutors in the US, unfortunately, who attempt to terrorize defendants into accepting their plea deals. It's not much different than the way torture was used in the Middle Ages to extract confessions and secure convictions.

It's pretty sad to see a press release that attempts to obfuscate the truth like this.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#149

Post by waps »

amirmc wrote: post #127
jacquesm wrote: post #7

> I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. That's why you assign investigations to independent entities, and that's why butchers aren't allowed to do their own health inspection. Whether it was appropriate or not is not for Carmen Ortiz to say. "The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his ac…

> "... - while a violation of the law - ..." I'm surprised no-one else is commenting specifically on the use of these words. Forgive my lack of knowledge/experience but isn't the point of the courts etc to go through the process of 'innocent until proven guilty'? If this basic premise is broken and no-one's talking about it then things must be in a really bad way.

Of the court - yes, absolutely. Every court case starts with the basic idea that the defendant did nothing wrong. That would be the judge that follows that principle. Is the prosecutor supposed to presume innocence ? No.

It's almost the opposite : the U.S. attorney is not an employee of the justice system, she's an employee of the executive (she represents Obama's interest as head of state - nothing else). She is a lawyer that is in the service of the white house and should therefore defend whatever opinion the executive has on the matter.

In simple terms : if the white house thinks you're guilty the attorney's job is to prove that beyond reasonable doubt. Assuming it goes to trial (which this case did not do) it seems extremely likely that the prosecutor thinks you're guilty, otherwise, why would she start a court case that's likely to publicly humiliate the executive ?

Please keep in mind that the opinion of Carmen Ortiz did not really come into the picture. Once the complaint was filed, and the complainant (MIT and JSTOR) demanded damages, her opinion did not matter in the least - her job is to find a settlement acceptable to all parties involved or bring the case to court (because it's a criminal case). She proposed a number of settlements, which were refused by either Aaron Swartz or MIT, and informed them she would bring the case to court, at which point she informed the defendant of the charges (and included the maximum penalty for them - maximum penalty seems unlikely to have been applied in this case, but that's of course my personal opinion, and I'm not the judge). After that the guy killed himself.

Of course, speaking in general, any attorney would probably like to have good relations with MIT, a place that trains more than a few people who later become judges.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#150

Post by jmilloy »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #17
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #5

> and did so reasonably. They still believe that? Sorry but they're unfit for the job. They need to go. There was nothing reasonable about their actions on this case. > a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. Six months in jail for downloading files that were accessible to him? All he did was violate terms of service! Are we going to start arresting under-age Facebook…

http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.... Downloading four million files, apparently. And if by breaking terms and services you mean illegally distributing protected content and threatening the business model of JSTOR then yes, I suppose that is true.

Now I'm on the lookout!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5066721

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