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by omnimus 521 days ago
“charges carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines plus 35 years in prison” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

I didnt think people on “hacker news” would be defending what happened to Aaron Swartz.
2 comments
cowsandmilk 521 days ago
> charges carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines plus 35 years in prison

Any lawyer knows that is stupid math. The DOJ has sentencing guidelines that never add up the years in prison for charges to be served consecutively. The media likes to do that to get big numbers, but it isn’t an honest representation of the charges.

I don’t think charges against Schwartz should have been filed, but I also can’t stand bad legal math.

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omnimus 521 days ago
Sure but… he could technically get that or not? If somebody wanted to really punish him they could push it to what? 3 years? 5 years? 10 years?

Because some people really wanted to punish him.

I am just reacting to the downplaying that he would get 6 months in jail. Like he was some weak person for commiting suicide because of that.

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tptacek 521 days ago
Swartz own lawyer, writing after his death, said he didn't believe Swartz would have received a custodial sentence even if he had gone to trial and lost. The prosecutors were offering him months in custody, against a 6-7 year sentence they believed they could get (implausibly, if you run the guidelines calculation). Nobody has to take the "35 years" thing seriously; nobody involved directly in this case did. Swartz was exactly the kind of nerd who would have memorized the sentencing guidelines just to win arguments on a message board (that's a compliment) and he had extremely good lawyers.

(I'm ambivalent about everything in this case and certainly don't support the prosecutors, but much of what gets written about Swartz's case is misinformation.)

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