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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

So this is on the OP, which quotes the Lessig post:

> For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge.

I never understood this assertion. Under what procedural grounds would a judge punish someone raising funds for their defense? Or is referring to more of a "the judge will be annoyed at you" kind of sanction?

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This question, along with the question why the EFF didn't fund Aarons' defense are close to the heart of all this. I've sent dr. Lessig an email asking for some enlightenment, I don't expect an answer (he's got other stuff on his plate right now) but I really would like to know what that was all about. It seems important.

Presumably the problem wasn't in asking for funds, the problem was in explaining why the funds were necessary. I read a recent story, probably linked here on HN, about how standard procedure for the Justice dept. is to freeze all your funds so you can't afford adequate representation, then dump so much paperwork on you that you have no chance to defend yourself. All of this would have been facts related to the case which the judge could easily gag.

How can a judge gag the defendant from speaking out? I don't really understand this.

My best guess is that it may be to avoid polluting a future jury.

Would you happen to have a link?

Edit: found it, http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla...

Great stuff, ta for the link. This bit is amazing:

"It happens that the appointed lawyer was someone of considerable reputation and experience, but the feds neutralized the appointed lawyer’s skill by pouring more than 360,000 pages of disorganized documents onto him"

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