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Re: undefined

#201

Post by jlgreco »

adeaver wrote: post #155
_ea1k wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Linus said she lied. Strictly speaking, he didn't. "Compare these two statements - one from July 2011, one from yesterday, and tell me Carmen Ortiz isn't lying.." Perhaps Linus' words were "carefully crafted" too. He didn't strictly say she was lying, but he sure did imply that she was deliberately deceiving. You said: "If Linus said she made two _deliberate deceptions_, he'd be absolutely correct." Hmmm... (FW…

Actually he pretty much did say she lied: "But having the involved US attorney then basically lie about it all in a very public statement" Second paragraph

Basically: Adverb, In the most essential respects; fundamentally: "a basically simple idea".

Example usages: in this document: "Ctrl-F basically"

"Basically lying" is not the same as "lying", as commonly used in American English. Feel free to contrast this with "technically lying".

If you want to lawyer Carmen's words, then Linus get's to lawyer his.

Re: undefined

#202

Post by [deleted] »

btilly wrote: post #169
edanm wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be two camps on HN, on this issue and on the case in general. One camp says: "The total penalty possible was 35 years. In general this scared Aaron Swartz. In specific Carmen Ortiz now saying that they weren't pursuing this penalty is a lie, since it was always a possibility." The other camp says: "Forget the total that was theoretically possible. Every knowledgable person to talk about this case has sa…

The "second camp" that you describe does not really understand the situation. 6 months is the plea bargain. If Aaron rejected that, which is the path he was taking, he was facing anything in the range from winning the case to likely the 6-7 years the prosecution was pushing for. Thus there was a significant chance that he'd have gotten more than a few months of jail time. Now re-read Carmen Ortiz. She never said she…

[deleted]

Re: undefined

#203

Post by tedunangst »

downandout wrote: post #45
gojomo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the weaselly shades of English used by lawyers and politicians, the two statements highlighted by Torvalds do not necessarily contradict one another. The older statement accurately describes the maximums the law allows, and was used when that was the emphasis. (At the time, the DoJ probably didn't know themselves what sort of sentence they'd ask for, so the only informative and unfalsifiable thing to put in a PR s…

I expect that any criminal defendant, including Aaron, would read her initial statement as "they're going to put me in prison for 35 years". Even as plea negotiations went forward, the implication was "plead this out or you will get 35 years". She made statements that only a lawyer could love - rife with plausible deniability for any responsibility they have in this mess. However, I think any reasonable person would…

Why would you believe a press release from somebody's office over something they said in person?

Re: undefined

#204

Post by [deleted] »

podperson wrote: post #163
edanm wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be two camps on HN, on this issue and on the case in general. One camp says: "The total penalty possible was 35 years. In general this scared Aaron Swartz. In specific Carmen Ortiz now saying that they weren't pursuing this penalty is a lie, since it was always a possibility." The other camp says: "Forget the total that was theoretically possible. Every knowledgable person to talk about this case has sa…

Nice synopsis although I suspect faction A will claim you're misrepresenting them. My take on it is that the prosecution did what prosecutors do. Jason Swartz seems to me to have been somewhat bipolar, and in manic phases he was brilliant, enthusiastic, idealistic, and a bit nuts -- which is what got him in trouble. In his depressive phase he killed himself. Blaming the prosecutors for his decisions is a tad harsh. T…

[deleted]

Re: undefined

#205

Post by grandalf »

This reminds me of how everyone was mad at Rumsfeld and how he shouldered most of the blame for the Iraq war, leaving Bush largely unscathed.

Carmen Ortiz was doing her job, the real problem is higher up.

Re: undefined

#206

Post by geoka9 »

carlisle_ wrote: post #30

I'm not an attorney, but I would imagine even if Carmen Ortiz were completely at fault she would never admit as much and would never apologize. Why? Because she could open herself up to a civil lawsuit. This just speaks so highly of the state of our society. Even if you're at fault taking the moral high ground, owning up and apologizing means you could have the rest of your life ruined. Granted in this context it's a…

This just speaks so highly of the state of our society. Even if you're at fault taking the moral high ground, owning up and apologizing means you could have the rest of your life ruined.

If she doesn't feel bad about causing the death of Aaron Swarz, she should not apologize. If she feels bad enough that she needs to apologize, I doubt she would worry about being ruined financially ("man, I basically killed this man with my irresponsible actions, how can I live with that?").

Re: undefined

#207

Post by olefoo »

jacquesm wrote: post #7

Until Aarons' lawyer speaks up with evidence to the contrary Carmen Ortiz statement stands unchallenged. Much as I would like her to carry (or at least acknowledge) some actual responsibility for what she has helped causing there is a lot of room for interpretation here and saying 'she lied' in a legal sense is premature and may end up to be simply untrue. Linus is a very clever guy but he's dead wrong about this. I'…

She's a political appointee who chose to pursue a full-court press on something that should never have been a federal case, in the first place.

She's now politically damaged, and a liability to the Obama administration that appointed her. She should resign.

Re: undefined

#208

Post by farinasa »

A tactic used by lawyers is to emphasize the maximum so that the plea bargains will seem more attractive and be more easily accepted tod keep trials as short as possible. Are we that desperate to blame someone else? He killed himself.

Re: undefined

#209

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

jacquesm wrote: post #134
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, as someone pointed out on the Linus post, Aaron Swartz himself wrote about his prosecutor's behavior: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/semmelweis

I read that (interesting piece, I did not know this bit of history) and could not find any references to his prosecutors behavior, could you please point out the reference for me?

From Aaron's Post: "Why did doctors so stubbornly reject Ignaz Semmelweis? Well, imagine being told you were responsible for the deaths of thousands of your patients. That you had been killing the people you were supposed to be protecting. That you were so bad at your job that you were actually worse than just giving birth in the street."

Why can't Ortiz admit fault? If her and her department have made it common practice to do heavy handed plea bargaining and getting people to accept disproportionate punishments, like was revealed in Aaron's case then they are guilty of much more injustice than what they did to Aaron.

They deny they did anything wrong in the face of evidence that says otherwise because it would make them culpable in a much wider scope. This is the core behavior described in Aaron's post.

As a prosecutor, especially a government prosecutor, they shouldn't use every methods a judge lets them get away with when they are clearly unethical and lead away from justice. If this is now business as usual for the DOJ then, like the doctors who didn't wash their hands in Aaron post, they have been guilty of grave misconduct for a while now.

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