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Comment by jahewson | Hacker News Reader

That seems excessive. I would consider swatting lesser than attempted voluntary manslaughter which carries a maximum 10 year federal sentence. It’s also typically prosecuted at the state level, which kinda messes things up for the Feds. Reckless endangerment feels more appropriate, perhaps a bit too soft at 2 years maximum, though it is rarely prosecuted at the federal level. So 5 years maximum for the federal conspiracy charges seems basically in-line with any reasonable expectation.

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Attempted manslaughter is a federal crime? This doesn't sound right to me, as a (former) lawyer. I would think that special circumstances would be necessary for a homicide or attempted homicide to be a federal crime, which would explain why there might be a mandatory minimum.

Yes, 18 U.S. C. § 1113. The special circumstances can be as simple as breaking another Federal law while committing manslaughter. Of course the Feds would much rather stick to prosecuting crimes that don’t overlap state laws.

The section you cite appears to only apply to crimes committed "within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States", which is defined here [1]. By my reading, it does not include crimes committed inside of US states. It is limited to ships, areas outside of other countries, and various other places. Am I missing something?

Also, it doesn't require a 10 year sentence — it refers to "not more than seven years or fined under this title, or both.". [2] That literally means that no prison time is required. There is a cap on prison time, and it could be completely eliminated if a fine is given instead. Not exactly harsh treatment!

1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7#

2: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1113

> The section you cite appears to only apply to crimes committed "within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States", which is defined here [1]. By my reading, it does not include crimes committed inside of US states. It is limited to ships, areas outside of other countries, and various other places. Am I missing something?

It applies to land in states that is owned by the US government, which can include a lot of land thought of as inside states (national parks and military bases are the goto examples here). If you want real fun, try working out which law applies when you're on tribal land.

It's completely premeditated which is IIRC the main criterion for legally speaking 'murder'.

It’s not. The premeditated part gets you “voluntary” but the activity they chose to engage in carries only a very minor risk of death. They haven’t set out to kill somebody.

No. If I drive to a random house and start shooting at it, I don’t get to call that reckless endangerment. If I kill someone I sure as hell don’t get to call it an accident.

It does not matter if you think how is police operate is unreasonable, what matters is that what they do is well known and established, and the outcome is foreseeable.

Also, if your best defense is “this isn’t attempted murder, it’s just terrorism” I have questions.

Surely if the caller is getting charged with attempt to murder, then the SWAT doing the swatting should be charged with the same crime?

How can the caller be more culpable than the one actually commiting the crime? This literally never happens in the history of crime.

Because cops are (mostly) above the law.

No.

I mean yes, cops are mostly above the law, and in the US they definitely murder enough (disproportionately PoC) people without consequences to be a problem.

But in this case police are being told their are people with guns threatening to kill people, which is exactly the case where police are ostensibly justified in using force.

Police killing a swatting victim is meaningfully difference from police making up a fake claims to get a warrant, breaking down a door without notice, and then shooting at anyone who moves, or pulling someone over, asking if they have a gun, and then shooting them if they say yes, etc

>Surely if the caller is getting charged with attempt to murder, then the SWAT doing the swatting should be charged with the same crime?

The SWAT team didn't intend to hurt innocent people. They thought they were saving innocent people. The swatter was intentionally terrorizing innocent people.

What?

What you just said is "if someone falsely accuses another person of a crime, and the police arrest them, then the police are guilty of kidnapping", "if someone falsely reports a house fire and fire fighters break into the house to put it out, they are guilty of breaking and entering", etc.

Emergency services respond to the reported emergency, for SWAT that often involves an immediate threat to people's lives, so they come in with the expectation that they will need to use force. Now the increasing occurrence of swatting means that US swat teams should be aware of the possibility of false call outs, but they have to deal with "is this a case where me turning up results in someone killing their family if I don't stop them immediately, or is it a case where some dude on the internet doesn't like someone else?".

The whole point of a swatting is police are being told that the victim is has a gun and is threatening to kill people, which is effective because you get the same call when there is an actual person with a gun threatening to kill people.

Now US SWAT does have an issue (imo) that goes with US policing in general of putting safety of police/swat above anyone else, which is a real issue, but as everyone knows this it merely adds to the "you knew your actions had a significant likelihood of getting someone killed".

Your analogy doesn’t hold because it’s a very different crime with very different intent and culpability.

I’m simply pointing to the most similar Federal crimes and pointing out that the sentences are proportional. For comparison, Federal attempted murder-to-hire is only 10 years and that’s clearly a much worse crime.

Tragically there’s now over 1000 cases of swatting per year. Only one person (Andrew Finch) has been killed by police. (The swatter in this case was charged with involuntary manslaughter and got 20 years in jail).

It’s not comparable to murder because it’s much more likely that someone would be killed by you offering them a ride in your car than by swatting them.

>It’s not comparable to murder because it’s much more likely that someone would be killed by you offering them a ride in your car than by swatting them.

My car rides don't come with a 0.1% chance of death. I'm not that bad of a driver.

You're right, it's probably higher. Your skill as a driver doesn't make it impossible for a drunk driver in another car to hit yours, unfortunately.

If I drive 1 trip per day, a 0.1% chance of death on each trip means I would only survive 3 years on average. And I take more than 1 trip per day. Most people live much more than 3 years, so the risk is certainly less than 0.1% per trip.

Let's calculate it. There were 42,915 traffic deaths in the US in 2021.[1]

Americans take 411 billion trips per year.[2]

That's 42915/411000000000 = 0.00001% chance of death per trip. So a driving trip is 10000x safer than being swatted.

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

[2] https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-ho...

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