3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
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3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
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Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#2The Appeals Court acknowledged that there were lots of issues at play in the appeal, but that they only had to judge one of them to vacate the conviction.
The prosecutors selected New Jersey as the venue for the case, despite the fact that Aurnheimer and his co-conspirators hadn't been located in NJ, and AT&T's servers weren't in NJ. The rationale was that some of the addresses disclosed belonged to NJ residents.
Not only did they select a tenuous venue, but they allowed the court to sidestep the issue during jury instructions. The jury decides whether venue is correct. Because venue was important to the case, the jury was supposed to receive instructions on how to evaluate the validity of the venue. But the trial court decided that venue had been adequately established.
"The venue error in this case is not harmless because there was no evidence that any of the essential conduct elements occurred in New Jersey. If Auernheimer’s jury had been properly instructed on venue, it could not have returned a guilty verdict"
One reason this matters is that the CFAA charges that were applied to Auernheimer depended in part on NJ state law. In fact, the specifics of NJ state computer crime law might have been the reasons prosecutors stretched venue so much to get the case located there. But with the Appeals Court determining that the NJ venue was invalid, the whole framework of the case falls apart.
Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#3I'm assuming they're going to just let this die, now, and release weev, and not try again against him.
This avoids any serious ruling about CFAA, and preserves the arbitrarily-expansive reading of CFAA to use against other victims. They've already ruined weev's life sufficiently for their purposes.
Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#4I'm assuming they're going to just let this die, now, and release weev, and not try again against him. This avoids any serious ruling about CFAA, and preserves the arbitrarily-expansive reading of CFAA to use against other victims. They've already ruined weev's life sufficiently for their purposes.
I'm assuming they're going to just let this die, now, and release weev, and not try again against him.
I'd be astonished if they did.
Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#5The Appeals Court acknowledged that there were lots of issues at play in the appeal, but that they only had to judge one of them to vacate the conviction. The prosecutors selected New Jersey as the venue for the case, despite the fact that Aurnheimer and his co-conspirators hadn't been located in NJ, and AT&T's servers weren't in NJ. The rationale was that some of the addresses disclosed belonged to NJ residents. Not…
It sounds like this could have bearing on the Tidbit / Jeremy Rubin case. He was from MIT attending a hackathon and NJ decided to go after him along the same lines using the CFAA -- his hack could be used to defraud residents of NJ -- even though he had no connection to NJ.
Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#6Can someone tell me why they decided to try him in New Jersey in the first place? I understand some of the addresses were in NJ, but that seems like a weak reason. Is there something about NJ computer crime statute that they thought would help the case over other states?
Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#7I'm assuming they're going to just let this die, now, and release weev, and not try again against him. This avoids any serious ruling about CFAA, and preserves the arbitrarily-expansive reading of CFAA to use against other victims. They've already ruined weev's life sufficiently for their purposes.
Didn't their most important charge rely on the "in the commission of a felony" accelerator? Didn't that felony rely on NJ state law? Didn't this case just limit their ability to pull the laws of arbitrary states out of their asses for making similar claims in the future?
Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#8Can someone tell me why they decided to try him in New Jersey in the first place? I understand some of the addresses were in NJ, but that seems like a weak reason. Is there something about NJ computer crime statute that they thought would help the case over other states?
Yes, that seems to be the real reason they picked NJ.
Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#9I'm assuming they're going to just let this die, now, and release weev, and not try again against him. This avoids any serious ruling about CFAA, and preserves the arbitrarily-expansive reading of CFAA to use against other victims. They've already ruined weev's life sufficiently for their purposes.
Didn't their most important charge rely on the "in the commission of a felony" accelerator? Didn't that felony rely on NJ state law? Didn't this case just limit their ability to pull the laws of arbitrary states out of their asses for making similar claims in the future?
True. (although they can probably find other felonies to invoke, and maybe there will be an effort to get more state to adopt whacko versions of CFAA...)
Re: 3rd Circuit vacates Weev's conviction [pdf]
#10I'm assuming they're going to just let this die, now, and release weev, and not try again against him. This avoids any serious ruling about CFAA, and preserves the arbitrarily-expansive reading of CFAA to use against other victims. They've already ruined weev's life sufficiently for their purposes.
Does double jeopardy not apply here?