[jacquesm]

Yes, and if you looked carefully you'll notice that he didn't actually do anything until he was threatened with spending a life in jail and being bankrupted, without the option to get off without pleading guilty.

And all that for trying to do something good.

You describe yourself as a 'public interest lawyer'. I suggest you try to live up to that title and have the public interest at heart. The subject of your little rant definitely had the public interest at heart. At least go and read up a bit more about what actually happened, it's not as if there is a shortage of information.

[tptacek]

This place needs more public interest lawyers. It does not need more questions about whether its participants deserve to call themselves that. Please stop doing this.

[jacquesm]

I agree that this place needs more public interest lawyers.

Informed ones, rather than state level prosecutors that try to wash their professions hands clean without some introspection on cause and effect.

[tptacek]

Is Kristin Lee a state prosecutor? All I see is "public interest lawyer". If she's worked as a prosecutor, we should 10000x more want her here. I'm trying my best to find someone who's worked as a prosecutor to explain the mentality behind the baffling-in-retrospect decisions made in the Swartz prosecution.

It is very obvious how upset you are. But we should want more perspectives, not fewer, especially from people with actual legal training.

[jacquesm]

> Is Kristin Lee a state prosecutor?

Yes. By her own account.

> If she's worked as a prosecutor, we should 10000x more want her here. > I'm trying my best to find someone who's worked as a prosecutor to explain the mentality behind the baffling-in-retrospect decisions made in the Swartz prosecution.

Agreed, but she has already made up her mind. Aaron killed himself because he was mentally ill, and that's that as far as she's concerned.

> It is very obvious how upset you are.

You don't know the half of it.

> But we should want more perspectives, not fewer, especially from people with actual legal training.

This I agree with. But attempting to whitewash this is not very productive.

[tptacek]

Jacques, I hear you, and I'm sorry. But can we ask her questions? There's so much I want to know about how this happened.

[jacquesm]

Go for it, I don't think anybody ever stopped you from doing anything you wanted to do.

My biggest question is this: was there any link at all between the PACER case and the way Aaron was hit over the JSTOR issue?

And if there wasn't what was the reason that Aaron was prosecuted when the aggrieved party was already satisfied that no harm had been done?

I'm pretty sure that with Hal Abelson as the head of the MIT internal investigation that we'll get a very clear picture of what happened at MIT but I'm not so sure that the Justice department will come clean (in fact I'm pretty sure they'll just put the blame squarely on Aaron, just like ms. Lee did here).

And I highly doubt ms. Lee has any of the answers here that would truly give us insight in where this whole thing went off the rails.

[objclxt]

>"he was threatened with spending a life in jail and being bankrupted, without the option to get off without pleading guilty."

...I don't quite understand this. Surely he did have an option to "get off without pleading guilty" - to be found not guilty by a jury of his peers.

[fatbird]

One of the issues that's been topical around here lately is that the cost of being found not guilty by a jury, is itself ruinous, if not totally out of reach of most people. This is part of the fed's strategy in massively overcharging people: It pressures them to accept a plea deal, which is how the vast majority of cases are resolved, because they can't possibly afford to stick it out long enough to be found not guilty.

[potatolicious]

Except he was guilty, and didn't stand a chance in an actual trial. This part's not even controversial - Aaron was evidently fighting laws that he believed were unjust. The fact that he violated them is not in question.

And a court would have no choice but to find him guilty, as that is the purpose of the judiciary. A court cannot let someone walk after a crime simply because the law itself is unjust.

[glesica]

Not necessarily, and it is controversial. I read the indictment and have followed the case and, though I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that most of the charges were dubious, at best. They seem to have over-charged him, perhaps to extract a plea deal. In other words, the prosecutors may not have even expected to be able to convict him on all counts.

You cited nothing, and your claims are impossible to back with reasonable facts. I suspect you haven't even read about the case (though I see in some of your other comments that you claim to be familiar with the facts).

You want us to be "better", and I agree that anger after the fact is less ideal than anger beforehand. But making ridiculous statements about guilt or innocence is just as bad as condemning the prosecutors for murder.

[Illychnosis]

> A court cannot let someone walk after a crime simply because the law itself is unjust.

Incorrect. That's what the power of jury nullification is for. It's been ensconced in Western law for centuries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilburne

Aaron only committed a crime worthy of severe punishment if one takes the point of view of the Crown...I mean, of the government.

[arrrg]

That’s not what jury nullification is for – not in the sense you are talking about it.

The possibility of jury nullification is an inevitable consequence of how the US justice system is set up. There is no way around it. It’s a property of the system, not a intentionally designed feature.

Put another way: For juries to have meaningful power, jury nullification has to be a possibility.

I also think it’s illusory to believe that jury nullification is in any kind of way a meaningful escape. It’s a fluke, nothing more.

[dialtone]

You are wrong and it is intentionally designed in the system. Why then have the verdict of a jury be final, with impossibility of re-trial, even in the eyes of Congress, if not to defend the Constitutional Right of Jury nullification?

From the same article[1] I quoted in another reply:

Theophilus Parsons, first Chief Justice of Massachusetts, explained:

The people themselves have it in their power to resist usurpation, without an appeal to arms. An act of usurpation is not obligatory; it is not law; and any man may be justified in his resistance. Let him be considered a criminal by the general government, yet only his fellow citizens can convict him; they are his jury, and if they pronounce him innocent, not all the powers of Congress can hurt him; and innocent they certainly will pronounce him, if the supposed law he resisted was an act of usurpation.

Or, as Patrick Henry put it:

Why do we love this trial by jury? Because it prevents the hand of oppression from cutting you off. This gives me comfort ” that as long as I have existence, my neighbors will protect me.

[1]: http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/02/05/a-guide-to-surviving-...

[rprasad]

As a former defense attorney, I would have loved it if jury nullification was intentionally designed into the system.

Unfortunately, it's not. It's just a great side effect of the right to a trial by jury.

In the American legal system, the modification of laws is left to the legislature. A jury can express its displeasure with a law by nullifying, but this has no legal import, since a different jury could easily convict. Thus, the primary method of expressing displeasure in a law...is to express displeasure in a law (by calling your local legislator).

[btilly]

It’s a property of the system, not a intentionally designed feature.

It was not intentionally designed into common law, but when the Constitution specified when trial by jury should be used, it was widely understood that this was the power that juries had. And this was approved of by the founding fathers. For instance Thomas Jefferson said, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

Therefore jury nullification may be an accidental property of common law, but it is NOT an accidental property of the US system of law.

[jacquesm]

Jury nullification is to all intents and purposes mostly a theoretical thing nowadays.

[dialtone]

According to Clay Conrad, author of this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Jury-Nullification-The-Evolution-Doctr...

And according to an article that he wrote in 2003[1]:

Jury nullification occurs in 3-4% of all criminal trials. Jurors cannot be ordered to convict or punished for acquitting. A jury verdict of Not Guilty is final.

[1]: http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/02/05/a-guide-to-surviving-...

[mindcrime]

A court cannot let someone walk after a crime simply because the law itself is unjust.

Yes they can.[1]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

[joshstrange]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

> Jury nullification occurs when juries acquit criminal defendants who are technically guilty, but who do not deserve punishment. It occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judge's instructions as to the law.

I do not agree with kristenlee but I did want to bring up at a jury can let someone walk who is technically guilty.

Edit: Sorry, didn't mean to post the same as 2 other people I read the article then came back to read the comments and I didn't see the other comments as I hadn't refreshed the page

[dialtone]

As a matter of fact a jury can do that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification although of course this is a controversial topic.

[saraid216]

I actually find it implausible that a jury would have been savvy enough to know, even after courtroom-education by the defense, that nullification was an ideal option.

[rhizome]

The status quo would seem to agree with you, and would like to keep it that way:

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2012/04_...

[masklinn]

> Surely he did have an option to "get off without pleading guilty" - to be found not guilty by a jury of his peers.

1. That would have bankrupted him anyway.

2. He was guilty, as far as the law book is concerned.

[tankenmate]

I'm not sure but weren't all the charges he was accused of require mens rea?

[nitrogen]

Maybe a Massachusetts jury would be better, but I would generally expect the alleged fact that Aaron hid his face from a camera with a bike helmet (sorry, can't remember where I read this) to be enough to convince most juries of ill intent, given that most people seem to equate "sneaky" with "wrong."

[fnordfnordfnord]

He wasn't merely threatened with being bankrupted. He was bankrupted, and was having to rely on family for support as I understand it.

[Evbn]

If only Reddit had taken on more ads, Aaron might have had enough wealth to fight.

[unreal37]

So from what I've read, he had the option to plead guilty to some charges and I'm sure spend very little time in jail, but he didn't want to plead guilty at all. He had options.

[nitrogen]

Being labeled as a felon, with the implications thereof regarding voting, employment, serving on a jury, etc. is hardly an option worth considering.

[unreal37]

So the two options were: 1) Plead not guilty, case drags on for years, costs $millions to defend, get convicted, serve 2-3 years in jail, unable to fight for something you believe in during that time

2) Plead guilty, case is over quickly, not expensive to defend, get convicted, serve 2-3 months in jail, get on with fighting for something you believe in

I would say option #2 is "worth considering".

[graysnorf]

He was facing potentially 35 years in jail, not 2-3 years.

[Evbn]

Different people have different standards. Maybe Aarons choice helped protect people who follow in his footsteps.

[SilasX]

I'm pretty sure employment wouldn't be an issue for him.

Anyway, if you want to protest the law, you can let yourself be found guilty at trial, then challenge the law on appeal.

[stretchwithme]

Even then, suicide is not the only option.

One could walk across a border, for example. Not the easiest course, not as easy as being released from responsibility for one's actions, but better than death for sure.