[MereInterest]

A prosecutor choosing to seek a 6-month jail sentence is acceptable. A prosecutor choosing to seek a 50-year jail sentence is also acceptable. A prosecutor who is offering a 6-month jail sentence in exchange for waiving basic human rights, while threatening a 50-year jail sentence if those rights are exercised, has crossed the line into persecution.

It's an analogous situation to blackmail. Suppose Alice has found evidence that Bob robbed a bank. Alice is legally allowed to reveal that evidence to the police, but is under no obligation to do so outside of a subpoena. However, even though both choices are legally permissible, Alice is not allowed to make her choice be conditional on receiving payments from Bob, as that would cross the line into blackmail.

Plea bargains are a form of extortion, and should not be part of the legal system.

[gruez]

>Plea bargains are a form of extortion, and should not be part of the legal system.

So you think that every case should be tried, even if it's plainly obvious the perpetrator is guilty? After all, even if the perpetrator has a 1% chance of winning, there's no reason not to go to trial under that system.

[shkkmo]

> So you think that every case should be tried, even if it's plainly obvious the perpetrator is guilty?

If the perpetrator is willing to plead guilty, there is no need for a trial.

Threatening people with massively larger penalties if they exercise their right to a trial rather than take a plea deal (often time limited before the defense has a chance to see the evidence) is coercive extortion and is morally wrong. There is plenty of evidence of innocent people (especially poor people) taking plea deals due to these prosecutorial tacits of threat and decite.

[simplestats]

What about giving a more lenient sentence if the person is remorseful and admits what they did was wrong? Because that's effectively the same thing as a plea deal. Even innocent people would still sometimes admit guilt and apologize, destroying their chances of winning at trial either way, to get a shorter sentence.

[shkkmo]

Leniency during sentencing is not effectively the same as plea bargaining at all. A plea deal comes from threats and fear, a lenient sentence handed down by a judge comes from remorse and judgment. Lenient sentences can come without a guilty plea anf a guilty plea doesn't guarantee leniency. The incentives are entirely different.

[simplestats]

The incentives are identical, less jail time. The fact that one is guaranteed deal while one is a standard sentencing practice is a distinction without a difference. The effect will be the same, innocent people "admitting" guilt. In Japan, plea bargains were illegal until recently. Yet standard police behavior when arresting someone was to notify them how much more lenient the system wold be on them if they admited guilt. And they were just stating facts about how the system works, not guaranteeing you anything... and racking up a 99.9% conviction rate. A lawyer in any country would tell you the same thing if your chances didn't look good.

[shkkmo]

The incentives for the judge and for the prosecutor are very different, though it sounds like the incentives for the police in Japan might be similar.

[theonemind]

> If the perpetrator is willing to plead guilty, there is no need for a trial.

I don't really think courts should take guilty pleas. I believe in some times/places in the middle ages, courts would not take guilty pleas in case the prisoner had gotten coerced into pleading. Sometimes, we have people with mental illness or other issues that will plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit.

Along the same lines of "reasonable doubt" in the US generally being enough to escape criminal conviction, I think we should err on the side of safety and perhaps even inefficiency in (not) letting the state exercise its monopoly power of force, coercion, and imprisonment against anyone for any reason, ever.

[ModernMech]

While you make very valid points about plea deals in general, I don’t think they apply in this specific case. Swartz was very rich, and well represented. He also actually did the thing in question, and demonstrated consciousness of guilt.

It’s okay for guilty people to be offered plea deals. It’s actually probably in their best interest sometimes.

[shkkmo]

> He also actually did the thing in question, and demonstrated consciousness of guilt.

He did a thing, that doesn't mean that thing qualified as a felony, or even a crime. It certainly did not merit 50 years in prison.

> It’s okay for guilty people to be offered plea deals. It’s actually probably in their best interest sometimes.

It is simply not OK to threaten people with penalties that are well more than an order of magnitude higher than the plea deal.

This isn't the kind of plea deal that furthers justice by obtaining a cooperative witness in a more serious case. This sort of plea deal is offered to advance the Prosecutor's career.

> Swartz was very rich, and well represented.

As the article explains, Swartz was out of money, well into debt, and faced with begging people for money to continue fighting the case.

[ModernMech]

I get the sense that you are channeling a general distrust of the system into this specific case. I will say I’m in agreement with your points in a general sense.

But as far as this case goes, I’m not sure. The alleged crime is a very technical one. The facts are all recorded and they paint a clear picture. The only question is how they apply to the law and whether or not they raise to the level of a crime.

That’s the job of a jury. They will receive a document with a list of charges, and the prosecution will lay out a very clear roadmap as to how each element of their case maps to the elements of the relevant statutes being charged.

Since this is a very technical crime, most of the evidence would be document-based and very convincing to a jury. It’s hard to create reasonable doubt in such document-heavy cases. So the only question will be how many charges can the prosecutor make the facts fit. That’s where these “50 years” claims come in, by stacking charge after charge in serial.

But importantly, neither the prosecutor nor the jury decide the sentence. That’s the job of the judge under the sentencing guidelines. This is what makes those “50 years” claim of the prosecutor bogus, and what any well-represented individual should understand.

I think Swartz did understand that because he opted to go to trial.

I get that people want there to be a clear moral story here. One perspective is that Swartz was a child prodigy, a beloved activist, someone who challenged the system, and then succumbed to pressure when it bore down on him with the full weight of the federal government.

But it’s not as clean as that. On the other hand he was a well connected, high net worth individual who repeatedly flaunted the system, and thought he would never face consequences. In my opinion, that’s the profile of someone ripe for heavy handed prosecution.

I am sympathetic to both perspectives.

[shkkmo]

> The only question is how they apply to the law and whether or not they raise to the level of a crime.

It was a fairly unique and novel application of those laws and some of the charges depended on making arguments about what the intent was with the data. There absolutely was a great deal of prosecutorial discretion and even imagination in coming up with those charges. We will never know if which of those would have stuck.

> the profile of someone ripe for heavy handed prosecution.

It was most certainly a political prosecution.

[skinnymuch]

Why are other things like the prosecutors words to be believed in the article. But not Swartz’s money issues? Why would the article bring up going into debt if he’s a high net worth individual?

Others have brought up people like Lori Loughlin. No one would talk about her or any of the college scandal wealthy parents going into debt.

[MereInterest]

Yes, that is correct. A guilty plea may be given, but any incrementally added incentive for somebody to give a guilty plea also incrementally removes the right to have a trial.