The average American thinks an arrest is tantamount to guilt; one of many signs of this is that mugshots are made public here. Snowden should stay exiled.
Up to the jury. Jury nullification is a possibility. If I was on the jury I would vote to acquit (of course for that reason I wouldn't end up on the jury).
The government likely wants to charge Snowden with espionage, not just with mishandling classified information. There's a difference between guilty of some crime and guilty of the crimes the government wants to charge.
So was Rosa Parks. We have a whistleblower law, along with a gov't oath to defend the Constitution, that potentially trumps other laws. So his prison potential isn't so clear.
> defend the Constitution, that potentially trumps other laws
I can't see how it couldn't trump other laws!
Think about it. If you can pass a new law which trumps the Constitution via a method that doesn't involve a Constitutional amendment, then you've just done an end-run around the theoretically supreme law of the land. And if you can do that, the Constitution is completely meaningless.
The whole point of the document is that it outlines some bedrock stuff and it's neigh impossible to change unless everyone in the country really agrees that it needs to via a 3/4 majority of the states ratifying.
I would argue that the Constitution absolutely overrides laws to the contrary and we see this play out all the time with the Supreme Court. Things get struck down all the time as unconstitutional and that's the end of it.
I can't see how the founding document of our government can somehow be subverted by other laws unless those laws are deemed as important via ratification.
> I would argue that the Constitution absolutely overrides laws to the contrary
We're agreeing with each other? It's up to each person who takes an oath to defend the Constitution, to ignore and even fight against unconstitutional laws, i.e. ones that in an ideal world would be overridden by a fair Supreme Court.
Couldn't reply earlier due to "you're posting too fast" limitation, even after a day. I may have to wait several days to reply again.