5 ms·

I assume whomever downvoted You has forgotten what happened to Aaron Schwartz.

ramblerouser 8y ago
Or maybe puts on tin foil hat they know exactly what happened to him.
fixermark 8y ago
... or they know about the time a woman in Pennsylvania was able to seek justice by getting her murder-attempting neighbor on mail fraud when the local cops wouldn't do anything. http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/21/us.scotus.toxic.love/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/21/us.scotus.toxic.love/ind...
dasil003 8y ago
Swartz
tzs 8y ago
He's probably being down-voted for saying erroneous things like > The high conviction rate is a result of extremely high maximum sentences. People who are 100% innocent often plead guilty after being threatened with a 30-year prison sentence that would be only 1 or 2 years under local law. That's erroneous because very few federal defendants actually face such long sentences, so those that do so pleading guilty is not a plausible explanation for high conviction rates. Federal sentences for a particular instance of a crime are based on the class of the crime and on the details of the particular instance. The class sets an upper limit, which often is long, up to 20 years, but it is the details that determine how much you can actually get. To actually get anywhere near that 20 years you have to have a lot of the details against you. Typically this means you caused a lot of damages or harm, had multiple prior convictions for similar crimes, where doing it as part of organized crime, and similar things. Swartz is a good example. A lot of reporting said he faced 30 years or 50 years or similar big numbers. Actually, he was looking at maybe 6 or 7 years if things went as favorably as possible for prosecutors. The DOJ bears a lot of the blame for that bad reporting. They make no attempt in the press releases announcing indictments to actually compute the maximum sentence for the particular instance of the crime. They just give the maximum that it is possible for the worst possible instance of that crime committed by the worst possible defendant. Here's a good article on federal sentence length [1]. [1] https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
- towelr34dy 8y ago
  When you say "he was looking at maybe 6 or 7 years if things went as favorably as possible for prosecutors" Do you know this for a fact? Because the way I understand it is, he was facing multiple decades in prison IF all charges stuck. And once you got to trial, all charges can stick. It has happened. So he was facing 35 years. So saying he wasn't is just wrong. Your 6-7 years is 'probably'. I think what your saying is: The federal government doesn't threaten you with 35 years, they threaten you with 10x3.5 years, and since it is possible that not all 10 will stick... it's not really a 35 year threat? I mean, if I threaten to punch you 10 times but I might stop at 1,2,3 or any number and I probably won't get to 10, but we can negotiate before I start, is it not a 10 punch threat? To me it seems like you are splitting hairs in order to defend the indefensible. The practice of tacking on as many charges to get people to plea bargain is unethical and fascist.
  - tzs 8y ago
    Suppose I toss a brick through the window of a government office overnight when no one is inside, causing $101 worth of damage. I could be charged with felony destruction of government property, a crime with the statute says has a maximum sentence of 10 years and a $250k find. Am I facing 10 years in prison? No! That's because the way sentencing works under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is that the sentence range is looked up in a table whose rows range from short sentences up to the maximum (10 years in this case). The biggest factor in that lookup is how much monetary damage I caused. At $101 I'm going go get a row with a sentencing range that is something like up to a year or so. To push it up to where my sentencing row actually includes 10 years I'd have to have done a lot more damage, such as blown up the building. (There are other factors that also go into picking the row, such as if I have prior convictions for similar crimes). When I'm indicted, though, the DOJ press release will tout that I've been charged with a crime with up to 10 years and $250k fines as penalties. They'd say the same thing when indicting someone who blew up the whole building. Their press releases make no attempt to convey the sentence the person is actually facing based on the facts the DOJ is alleging about that person's alleged crime. In the case of someone charged with multiple crimes there is another factor that leads to inflated numbers. The same underlying acts can often support more than one charge. Similar crimes are grouped together for sentencing under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and if you are charged with and convicted of more than one crime from the same group based on the same underlying acts, you are only sentenced for one of them. Unfortunately, this grouping is often ignored in press releases and reporting about potential sentencing. In most cases, those multi-decade numbers you see people talk are due to one or both of the aforementioned issues: (1) not taking into account what the person is actually alleged to have done, and (2) ignoring grouping if the person is charged with more than one thing. Here is a detailed analysis of Swartz's possible sentencing [1]. The earlier article by the same author looking at what he was charged with is also interesting [2]. [1] http://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/ http://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aa... [2] http://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
michaelbuckbee 8y ago
Or Wen Ho Lee - charged with 59 counts of espionage (stealing nuclear secrets). Eventually was convicted/plead to one count of mishandling data and went on to get a $1mil settlement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee

Or maybe puts on tin foil hat they know exactly what happened to him.

... or they know about the time a woman in Pennsylvania was able to seek justice by getting her murder-attempting neighbor on mail fraud when the local cops wouldn't do anything. http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/21/us.scotus.toxic.love/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/21/us.scotus.toxic.love/ind...

dasil003 8y ago

Swartz

tzs 8y ago

He's probably being down-voted for saying erroneous things like > The high conviction rate is a result of extremely high maximum sentences. People who are 100% innocent often plead guilty after being threatened with a 30-year prison sentence that would be only 1 or 2 years under local law. That's erroneous because very few federal defendants actually face such long sentences, so those that do so pleading guilty is not a plausible explanation for high conviction rates. Federal sentences for a particular instance of a crime are based on the class of the crime and on the details of the particular instance. The class sets an upper limit, which often is long, up to 20 years, but it is the details that determine how much you can actually get. To actually get anywhere near that 20 years you have to have a lot of the details against you. Typically this means you caused a lot of damages or harm, had multiple prior convictions for similar crimes, where doing it as part of organized crime, and similar things. Swartz is a good example. A lot of reporting said he faced 30 years or 50 years or similar big numbers. Actually, he was looking at maybe 6 or 7 years if things went as favorably as possible for prosecutors. The DOJ bears a lot of the blame for that bad reporting. They make no attempt in the press releases announcing indictments to actually compute the maximum sentence for the particular instance of the crime. They just give the maximum that it is possible for the worst possible instance of that crime committed by the worst possible defendant. Here's a good article on federal sentence length [1]. [1] https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

towelr34dy 8y ago
When you say "he was looking at maybe 6 or 7 years if things went as favorably as possible for prosecutors" Do you know this for a fact? Because the way I understand it is, he was facing multiple decades in prison IF all charges stuck. And once you got to trial, all charges can stick. It has happened. So he was facing 35 years. So saying he wasn't is just wrong. Your 6-7 years is 'probably'. I think what your saying is: The federal government doesn't threaten you with 35 years, they threaten you with 10x3.5 years, and since it is possible that not all 10 will stick... it's not really a 35 year threat? I mean, if I threaten to punch you 10 times but I might stop at 1,2,3 or any number and I probably won't get to 10, but we can negotiate before I start, is it not a 10 punch threat? To me it seems like you are splitting hairs in order to defend the indefensible. The practice of tacking on as many charges to get people to plea bargain is unethical and fascist.
- tzs 8y ago
  Suppose I toss a brick through the window of a government office overnight when no one is inside, causing $101 worth of damage. I could be charged with felony destruction of government property, a crime with the statute says has a maximum sentence of 10 years and a $250k find. Am I facing 10 years in prison? No! That's because the way sentencing works under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is that the sentence range is looked up in a table whose rows range from short sentences up to the maximum (10 years in this case). The biggest factor in that lookup is how much monetary damage I caused. At $101 I'm going go get a row with a sentencing range that is something like up to a year or so. To push it up to where my sentencing row actually includes 10 years I'd have to have done a lot more damage, such as blown up the building. (There are other factors that also go into picking the row, such as if I have prior convictions for similar crimes). When I'm indicted, though, the DOJ press release will tout that I've been charged with a crime with up to 10 years and $250k fines as penalties. They'd say the same thing when indicting someone who blew up the whole building. Their press releases make no attempt to convey the sentence the person is actually facing based on the facts the DOJ is alleging about that person's alleged crime. In the case of someone charged with multiple crimes there is another factor that leads to inflated numbers. The same underlying acts can often support more than one charge. Similar crimes are grouped together for sentencing under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and if you are charged with and convicted of more than one crime from the same group based on the same underlying acts, you are only sentenced for one of them. Unfortunately, this grouping is often ignored in press releases and reporting about potential sentencing. In most cases, those multi-decade numbers you see people talk are due to one or both of the aforementioned issues: (1) not taking into account what the person is actually alleged to have done, and (2) ignoring grouping if the person is charged with more than one thing. Here is a detailed analysis of Swartz's possible sentencing [1]. The earlier article by the same author looking at what he was charged with is also interesting [2]. [1] http://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/ http://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aa... [2] http://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/

michaelbuckbee 8y ago

Or Wen Ho Lee - charged with 59 counts of espionage (stealing nuclear secrets). Eventually was convicted/plead to one count of mishandling data and went on to get a $1mil settlement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee