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Well, the mere fact that a jury convicted someone of violating Federal Law X doesn't mean that Federal Law X is a good, just, or sensible law. Aaron Swartz may well have been convicted of violating Federal Law Y, but that doesn't justify his prosecution (or the existence of Federal Law Y). Here's a better description of the case: Seafood dealers were prosecuted and convicted for importing lobster tails from Honduras because they allegedly violated an obscure Honduran regulation requiring that frozen seafood be shipped in cardboard boxes instead of clear plastic bags, and because about three percent of the 70,000 pound shipment consisted of Caribbean spiny lobster tails that were less than 5.5 inches in length, which allegedly violated another Honduran regulation on size limit... Because the seafood was shipped in clear plastic bags instead of opaque boxes, they were also charged with "smuggling," even though the shipments regularly went through Customs inspections and testing by the Food and Drug Administration at the port near Mobile, Alabama... There was just one problem with the Justice Department's case: the Honduran regulations that served as the predicate for the charges were later declared to be null and void, repealed, and otherwise of no legal effect by Honduran courts, the Honduran Attorney General, and other high level Honduran officials, including the Honduran Human Rights Commission. The Honduran government took the extraordinary step of filing a brief in the court of appeals, and again in the Supreme Court, providing the official views of the country that the regulations were invalid. Source: http://www.wlf.org/upload/022404PK.pdf It sounds like you owe Harvey, who wrote Three Felonies a Day, an apology (he was EFF's first lawyer, I recall, and I wouldn't be surprised if he reads HN occasionally). But I have no brief to defend the book or talk at length about lobster tails; my point was overcriminalization is real. |
We know that there are people who believe someone was given an 8 year sentence for shipping a small amount of lobster tails in violation of Honduran law and for storing them in bags and not boxes. That's the headline of Silverglate's argument.
What wasn't clear was that the offenders had hauled fifteen million dollars of illegal lobster tails, deliberately selecting out-of-the-way ports with under-staffed inspectors, using bags (unlawfully) to conceal the amount of their take that violated regs, as part of an elaborate scheme that involved processing companies in Honduras and, at one point, a smuggling route through Canada.