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Comment by harryf | Hacker News Reader

Basically Julian Assange is screwed. They may make a show of the trial but you can be sure he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.

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I would be absolutely stunned if that was the case. I bet he gets less than a year. He probably won’t even be convicted unless they come up with something better than their current indictment.

The indictment is in the Eastern District of Virginia. This court is a favourite of the DoJ, since IIRC it has never (or maybe only very rarely, I can't remember where I read this) ruled in favour of the defendant in an Espionage Act case. The idea Assange will have a fair trial is a joke -- though I do hope he does.

This is a bit of a weird statement. Criminal courts don't "rule". Judges make rulings (which, if my understanding is correct, are binding and set precedent). Assange will be put in front of a jury. The jury will make a determination of guilt or lack thereof. But such a finding isn't a ruling in the legal sense. It's not precedent setting. It's that a prosecutor managed to convince a group of 12 randomish people that Assange really did whatever bad thing they claim he did, and Assange's own council wasn't able to convince them otherwise.

Judges can and often do, set expectations on scope and consideration the jury should take into consideration. That doesn't mean that jury nullification cannot happen, however no judge will generally let any jury know that they're even allowed to do that.

acquittal is not nullification.

When someone technically violated the law, but the jury doesn't convict is.

when somebody technically violated the law, but there's reasonable doubt, it's not nullification

I'm not talking about when there is doubt... I'm literally talking about jury nullification. Why do you keep insisting on setting it up as though I'm saying something else?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

Jury nullification is a specific term[1] referring to when a jury knows that a particular defendant is guilty of a crime but they decide to find them not guilty because they believe the law to be unjust. There are many examples of this occurring in history, and this exists as a unwritten legal concept as a logical consequence of two explicit legal concepts:

* Juries cannot be punished or reprimanded for coming to the "wrong decision". * A defendant who is acquitted cannot be tried again in front of a jury because of the defense of double jeopardy.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

There are many other clear examples of courts which have a statistical bias towards certain decisions. A very good example is that of Texas, where the vast majority (about 75%) of patent lawsuits are filed because they very often rule in favour of the plaintiff. This is why patent trolls often file suits in Texas.

The reason for that bias might be more complicated (the view of the local community which will be selected for a jury might be influenced through various means -- but that's a secondary question to the primary point that there is a statistical bias regardless of the reason for it).

Why would the US go to all this trouble just to put him in jail for less than a year?

The point is disrupting wikileaks, not putting him in jail.

Radical idea: to get him out of the Ecuadorian embassy and eventually on with his life

The alternative was him being locked in self-imposed exile forever. By getting him out, extraditing him, and finally sentencing him to a min term sentence, they can say they did something and still let him go in a reasonable amount of time.

I do not see /s tag so I am extremely confused.

Why would USA do this?

Since when has any country acted with benevolence towards those individuals it deems its enemy?

I wouldn't bet on him getting extradited, in the end it'll be a political decision and historically the UK press hasn't exactly been kind on the UK/US extradition treaty.

and even if he doesn't spend life in us prison, he'll be passed around the other allied countries he "attacked" and spend time for whatever crimes they come up with.

Probably with attitudes like this around..

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