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Comment by jdong | Hacker News Reader

Aaron was a good friend of mine, I know quite a bit about this case.

a) No he wasn't, this is a common misconception by people who don't understand how the US court system works.

b) Aaron had a good deal, the indisputable breaking-and-entering charge would probably have gotten him more than 6 months. (Clarification: Aarons state charges were dropped to make way for the more serious federal charges, so in the end he didn't even get charged for the breaking-and-entering.)

c) Again, read up on the US court system.

You're disrespecting his memory by using him as a weapon for your misguided crusade.

Here's a good article written by Orin Kerr regarding Aarons charges http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/

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a) Even if we want to bicker about the exact time, can we agree that he was facing a possible 5 years? That's ten times longer than what the prosecutors thought an appropriate punishment (the 6 month offered plea).

b) Not for a college-class first time offender into an unlocked network closet, especially given the institution. That would have been handled at the local level, and would have most likely ended up in probation.

c) Yes, this case was business as usual for the US "justice" system. That doesn't make it right.

If Aaron was a good friend of yours, then you probably do have some different insight. Please share it here instead of repeating the same tired he-got-what-he-deserved FUD.

a) Sure, he was facing a possible "5 years" (most likely much less) and was well aware of that.

b) Debatable, a prison sentence of a few years definitely wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary

c) You make it sound like there's something wrong with deals by prosecution, I don't think so. The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out.

Aaron knew what he was doing, he made a conscious decision to do it. I believe Aaron also knew that he'd get in trouble for doing this, what he was doing was civil disobedience. Orin Kerr describes this fairly well in his article http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...

A few years in prison for breaking and entering a maintenance closet on a college campus for a first time offender is ordinary?

Wow, I guess the hacks that happen at MIT do carry quite the risk then. I can only imagine how many decades people would have gotten if they were caught putting the Lunar Module on the Great Dome.

> most likely much less

And with that, you lose a great deal of credibility. It goes against your claim to have a great deal of knowledge about this case.

> The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out

With this, you lose a great deal of reputation you might have as a moral person, since you seem to think that extortionate behavior is acceptable, particularly from those with overwhelming power, such as the USG prosecutors. True, you are in good company, as the US justice system largely agrees with you that they have the right to extort; but that doesn't justify your position so much as emphasize that theirs, and yours, is evil.

> The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out.

Plea bargaining is a system that leads the state to extort guilty pleas out of innocent people. If you think it doesn't hurt anybody, quite frankly you have no idea what you're talking about.

If you'd like to learn more, here's a well-known paper on the subject:

http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

What appears to me to be simple logic:

If sentencing guidelines were ratcheted sharply downwards, plea bargaining wouldn't have an extortative effect, because prosecutors wouldn't have the latitude to pursue outlandish sentences.

However, if plea bargaining was outlawed but sentencing guidelines remained as they are now, sentencing and criminal procedure would remain unjust for the majority of defendants, who are ultimately guilty but don't deserve outlandish sentences.

Both policy changes are very unlikely, but for different reasons.

Plea bargaining won't be outlawed or curtailed because doing so would require allocating a huge amount of money to the court system, which is already overtaxed. Preempting an argument nobody has made: that's not "their problem, not ours", because what we'd really be talking about is years and years of delayed trials during which people will be held in confinement anyways. Look at China for an example of a system that has that problem in a big way.

Sentences won't be ratcheted down because there's never a political upside for doing that. That's obviously tragic.

I replied to your top-level comment, but I'll just emphasize here, that Kerr himself does not agree with your assessment that "there really doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the law here".

He also doesn't agree with your opinion that there's nothing wrong with the way prosecutors use plea bargaining.

He does argue that Aaron knowingly broke the law and should have faced some consequences, but probably not felony charges.

Really, you should read Kerr more carefully before linking to him.

> The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out.

What is wrong with some of you Americans?

How can you have as a part of justice system a deal where you can say "Ok. Let's pretend that I did this thing and you don't have to actually prove it and you won't try to convince anyone that I did this other more horrid thing you accuse me of. And who cares about the truth?"

Plea bargaining exists in Germany as well (under the rubric of "confession agreements").

I think plea bargaining is a red herring. Plea bargains are a necessity: jarring as it is for us to consider this, most felony† defendants are in fact guilty, as a simple consequence of how policing works. It doesn't appear that way to us intuitively, because we only hear about the interesting cases.

That's not a defense of US criminal procedure! We have a terrible, back-breaking policy flaw: sentences are much too onerous, as a result of several decades of "war on crime" legislation from the 70's, 80's, and 90's.

† The word "felony" there is important.

Even if the numbers make guilt look more likely, we cannot create policy with the assumption of guilt. We subscribe to a principle of innocent until proven guilty, plain and simple.

This principle is an essential safeguard, critical for the preservation of order in a democracy.

As I have said before in this thread. Don't rob Peter to pay Paul. It is simply illogical and counter productive.

No doubt a functioning court system is also extremely critical.

We just need to think about it like a bug in the software. In the end it is up to social innovators to correct this deficiency. There is a solution to this problem.

EXTRA --

There is the argument that this does not apply to illegal combatants or immediate threats to national security. Obviously that is another problematic and complicated position that my have policy bleeding into this case.

P.S. > the nuance of your position is clear

It is also a budget thing. Trails are not free.

It is an unfortunate problem with the current judiciary system. Pleas do avoid trail and as I understand it when things go to trail the penalties are substantially harsher.

So in many ways it can become the best bet... even for an innocent person.

Aaron's attorney at the time of his suicide wrote a summary of the case shortly after Aaron died. His attorney believed that given the nature of the crime (particularly: nonremunerative) and Aaron's first-time offender status, he was unlikely to serve a custodial sentence even if he was convicted. You can reach a similar conclusion by looking at the federal sentencing guidelines and seeing where the probation cutoff is.

This isn't bickering; the C.W. about Swartz is indeed that he was facing decades in prison. He was not.

I agree with the overwhelming majority of everyone that a custodial sentence for Swartz' actions would have been a miscarriage of justice. But the distinctions being made in this thread are not minor ones.

The prosecution thought he would get well over six months in prison, so beliefs clearly differ.

From a security mindset, you must surely know that if something can happen, then you must consider it. The statistical "expected outcome" of the sentence is irrelevant when it's the variance that's so crushing.

I'll give you that "decades" is an emotional exaggeration the other way. But unless you can bound that maximum at less than three years, then I would still call it "bickering". Anything in that range is life altering, and distinguishing between personality-ending and life-ending isn't particularly meaningful when they have a similar effect on the defendant.

You can look at sentences for comparable crimes with remunerative intent. For instance: Stephen Watt got 2 years for being instrumental to a massive credit card theft operation.

Another question you could ask is, is there an expert in criminal law who has made a case for Swartz actually facing 3+ years in prison?

Based on your account, "Aaron was a good friend of mine" requires substantial bonafides to bring you out of the realm of Astroturf.

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