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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

#281

Post by davesque »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #187
temphn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ortiz today: and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. Ortiz on 9/2012, adding 9 counts to the conduct that we learn "did not warrant...severe punishment": http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/aaron-swartz-felony... Federal prosectors added nine new felony cou…

I generally agree with your analysis, however you will find that lawyers disagree on the threat assessment. A prosecuting lawyer always says "these are the charges [specific charges] which carry a maximum sentence of [worst possible sentence]" and rarely (and never that I can find for first time convictions) are those maximums given. The implication in the press, and denied now by Orbitz, is that she told Aaron's law…

Well said. Facts, please.

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

#282

Post by mchusma »

"while a violation of the law"

I have noticed that government agents are relatively quick to assign blame when there has been no conviction. The charges were filed & ultimately dropped, so there has been no determination by the government that this was a violation of the law. I've been a victim of this myself. When launching the first online notary service, the CA secretary of state published an erroneous notice that we had committed a crime. When we spoke with their office, they indicated that there was no evidence of any crime. It ultimately took 2 years, and the threat of a lawsuit, to remove the false statements.

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

#283

Post by jrockway »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #49

"...we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. ...his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge" Little known fact here. When you accept a plea bargain you do not accept a sentence as part of that. Often times you agree to plea to lesser chargers which have a lower maximum penalty but you st…

When you are crushed, broke, and in jail what are ya gonna do, sue?

Sure. You have 24 hours a day of free time, a law library, and nothing to lose.

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

#284

Post by jamesaguilar »

nitrogen wrote: post #280
jamesaguilar wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are taking those charges to trial, and they were in this case, it means they are seeking those penalties. I don't think this is true. I think they just want to make sure they can convict him if they can prove lesser charges but can't prove the main charge.

Is it productive to society to convict someone of, say, "hiding one's identity in furtherance of a computer crime" (or the actual legal equivalent of those made up words I just typed) if that "computer crime" wasn't proven?

Presumably if that particular combination were in question, there would be no way to prove the former without the latter. That doesn't hold for all the combinations the prosecution filed.

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

#285

Post by corporalagumbo »

mpyne wrote: post #242
Peaker wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or his actions could have spread the wealth of information to many who lack access to it, facilitating further progress. The notion that publicly funded research works are behind paywalls is absurd. In any case, we will never know, because he never got around to actually distributing or doing anything with the downloaded products of public funding.

Are you sure that every article behind the JSTOR paywall was 100% publically funded? That's one question I've never heard the answer to. Not to mention, let's say we're talking about stuff funded by the U.S. taxpayers... are you sure they would want those scientific articles to be freely available outside the U.S.? Similar questions apply to things funded by the U.K., France, etc. Who gets to make that choice? In Aar…

Yes, I agree with you. This issue has nothing to do with the economics and apparent social justice of the journal publishing industry/complex.

This is about headstrong young white men deciding that the rules do not apply to them any more.

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

#286

Post by smsm42 »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #269
VSerge wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empty words from Carmen Ortiz, and quite Orwellian indeed. Adding 9 felony counts just about proves that the prosecutors were NOT measured in their approach. Whatever MIT's responsibility, it doesn't diminish how wrong the behavior of Ortiz et al was.

Erm, I can see a reasonable case for adding charges, even if you don't intend to ask for the maximum. You can only charge a defendant once for any given crime. You can't bring charges under different theories of guilt if your first attempt fails. So, no matter what sentence you are going for, you want to charge the defendant with all the crimes they could be guilty of. Otherwise, if they evade the largest charge, the…

There's only one crime, but there are a number of statutes that add all kinds of "add-on crimes", with widely intersecting definitions. Doing just one thing, you can be guilty both in computer fraud, unauthorized access, copyright violation, etc., etc. These are routinely used to a) intimidate the defendants and b) mislead the jury into thinking the defendant is a serious criminal (not one, but 15 charges! he must be guilty of at least something!) and gives strong incentive to "split down the middle" and convict on at least some of the charges. It is a routine trick, which is routinely used by prosecutors, and they know exactly what they are doing. In this case their intimidation has gone further than they intended, but otherwise they are not fooling anyone talking about how they really just wanted a small punishment and always told so to everybody. They bullied Swartz just as they bully everybody.

Analysis on Volokh's blog: http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains... shows the number of the charges probably would not influence the sentence much, but greatly increases chances of conviction and creates serious chance for a long prison term if unsympathetic judge happens to be sentencing.

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

#287

Post by smsm42 »

nitrogen wrote: post #280
jamesaguilar wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are taking those charges to trial, and they were in this case, it means they are seeking those penalties. I don't think this is true. I think they just want to make sure they can convict him if they can prove lesser charges but can't prove the main charge.

Is it productive to society to convict someone of, say, "hiding one's identity in furtherance of a computer crime" (or the actual legal equivalent of those made up words I just typed) if that "computer crime" wasn't proven?

Not really, but there are statutes - such as "unauthorized access" which become felonies if attached to any (even minor) other crime. So you can take two minor crimes, join them and get a felony. Moreover, if both are of such nature, you can have two felonies now, and if jury returns guilty on any of them, I understand you'd have felony conviction.

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

#288

Post by huhtenberg »

erichocean wrote: post #37
huhtenberg wrote: post #24

Let me just throw something out there. It's obvious that the investigation was a contributing factor to Aaron's decision to take his life, but to what extent? Was this at all investigated by the media, or have everyone just made the connection, because it was the easiest explanation?

Aaron killed himself two years to the day of this whole ordeal starting. Either that's an incredible coincidence, or Aaron decided to take his life as a political statement. Given his past actions, that's an easy assumption to make. Also, his request for a plea deal was denied in very harsh terms two days before Aaron took his own life, so even knowing just that and the fact that he really did not want to be labeled…

Thanks for the summary.

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

#289

Post by toyg »

tedunangst wrote: post #215
toyg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You seem to be implying that if the prosecution doesn't offer a deal you like, you should just keep hiring new lawyers until they make a better offer. Sounds like a get out of jail for $(cost of X lawyers) card.

Lawyer-people are (usually) human beings. Despite all the appeals to "professionalism" between prosecution and defense, some of them just have a better relationship, trading favours and whatnot.

Most honest defense lawyers will really have the best interest of their client at heart, and just dismiss themselves if they feel they can't work with a certain prosecutor; they might even recommend their own replacement. After all, it's in their own best interest not to get what they feel is a sub-par result on their CV.

The fact that Swartz went through three lawyers, coupled with what the last one of them said, might as well indicate that all of them felt the prosecution was being unreasonable, and were hoping that a different person might have obtained better results.

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

#290

Post by jacquesm »

FireBeyond wrote: post #273
jacquesm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) his lawyer and his closest family seem to agree that the lawsuit was the driving force 2) he did it on the anniversary of the start of the lawsuit 3) the actual trial was to start shortly 4) So far when under outside pressure he held up pretty good, but this was pressure far exceeding his previous exposure Now, none of that is conclusive proof. But I don't see any reason brought forward other than the lawsuit why…

It's a lot easier to blame the attorney prosecuting your child for his suicide than to point to his chronic depression (which I've not really seen acknowledged by them)...

It's a lot easier to blame a defendants suicide on his mental state than on your prosecution.

Aarons parents are under no obligation to acknowledge their sons mental state because he has acknowledged so himself in lots of places. That does not mean that this absolves everybody else from blame.

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