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Comment by jonas_b | Hacker News Reader

As a Swedish citizen this sends shivers down my spine. Since we have a rather weak constitution with little division of power we've relied on the good faith and judgement of our officials to avoid corruption, which has worked pretty well so far.

But now, to send people to jail, fully aware that he's affiliated with stakeholders in the case, that's just sickening.

Okay, swedish prisons for intellectual property offenders probably have a summer camp atmosphere to it, but that's not really the point. To take someones liberty should not be taken lightly.

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"have a summer camp atmosphere to it"

Perhaps. But the climate won't help much ;-)

Does swedish law has the thing where a verdict can be thrown out due to bias?

Well, I assume they wouldn't petition for something that doesn't exist. And the article makes clear that there's a court of appeals.

well yeah appeals is one thing, but it won't automatically clear them, I'm mainly thinking of how the Ted Stevens case was thrown out after a guilty verdict, due to prosecutor misconduct, surely there is the same thing for judges too.

Except in the case of Ted Stevens, everyone realized that it was corruption, and the people that "let him off the hook" are now under investigation for corruption.

It was thrown out because the prosecutor (actually the US Atty General) asked the case to be canceled.

I've taken some introductions to law, but this is not something I'm competent in, but I would assume that the defendants could get the verdict invalidated if they could prove that the judge's affiliation with affiliation with that association was of the nature that he should be unfit for duty.

In all likelyhood, I think the outcome will have a lot to do with how media reacts to this. If they label the judge corrupt and fights for a retrial, the courts of appeal will have a hard time resisting.

Isn't that exactly what appeals courts are for?

Oh, yes! :)

I think the idea I was trying to push was that for this trial, the outcome in courts of appeal will have more to to with politics and media leverage than the legal code.

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