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Aaron already suffered from severe mental illness - law enforcement did not drive him to suicide. Prosecutors offered him a plea deal if he took a six month sen

Aaron already suffered from severe mental illness - law enforcement did not drive him to suicide. Prosecutors offered him a plea deal if he took a six month sentence in a low security facility, which he turned down before killing himself. 99.9% of people his age would not end up dead by their own hands in that situation.

zionic 6y ago
What evidence is there the plea deal was offered? Sounds like PR by the state.
- xadhominemx 6y ago
  You don’t have to ask me, the information can be found on google within seconds.
  - hundchenkatze 6y ago
    You're offering the information, the least you could do is provide your source.
- Merman_Mike 6y ago
  > During plea talks held in the months before his death, federal prosecutors told Aaron Swartz and his attorney that the computer prodigy must spend six months behind bars and plead guilty to 13 federal crimes in order to resolve the criminal case short of a trial. > Swartz’s lead defense attorney, Elliot Peters, said today that both he and Swartz rejected the plea deal offered by the office of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, and instead were pushing for a trial where federal prosecutors would have been forced to publicly justify their pursuit of Swartz. First result on Google.
spijdar 6y ago
I actually feel some sympathy for both positions here. On the one hand, it's such a "no brainer" to take such a light sentence for what is legally such a "serious crime". On the other hand, though, it feels ridiculous that Aaron would have been put in jail at all for what he did. I think it's fair to say he wasn't in a good place, but it's maybe a little tone deaf to say the grief of the trial and prosecution had no role in his suicide.
- xadhominemx 6y ago
  Of course it had a role in his suicide, but no person who was not already very mentally ill would have ended their life in that situation. The narrative that prosecutors wanted to effectively ruin his life for his criminal offenses is just wrong.
  - SirSourdough 6y ago
    They were threatening him with 50 years in jail and a million in fines or accepting an immoral (to him, and as a more broadly held belief of many) punishment with no opportunity to defend himself and the prospect of a lifelong record of serious crimes. How is that not an effort to ruin someone’s life?
    - breck 6y ago
      Plenty of great people like Mandela spent a long time in jail for unjust reasons, and continued their protest from there. I think aaronsw could have done the same except he had bad luck and wasn't in a strong place at a critical time. I don't hold the prosecutors responsible for Aaron's suicide any more than I hold myself responsible for not publicly doing more to help him. From my conversations and dealings with aaron, I believe he was willing to die for his ideas, which were correct and true and just. I hope to god someday we can build the world he envisioned where everyone, regardless of wealth or location or creed, has access to the world's best knowledge and information.
    - xadhominemx 6y ago
      I don’t think Aaron’s criminal record would have impacted his life much at all. If anything it would have burnished his credentials and credibility as an activist.
      - selimthegrim 6y ago
        He wanted to run for office in the future and saw catching a felony as a risk to that goal
maccard 6y ago
From wikipedia: > On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, which increased Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines. During plea negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison, if Swartz would plead guilty to 13 federal crimes. Swartz and his lead attorney rejected that deal, opting instead for a trial in which prosecutors would have been forced to justify their pursuit of Swartz Let's be clear, this isn't "here's a slap on the wrist and we'll let it slide", this is "we're throwing the book at you on trumped up charges", and require him to plead guilty to 9 felonies to avoid a potential 50 year sentence. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._Aaron_Swartz_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- apple_innocent 6y ago
  For an interesting comparison, consider the first person to be charged under CFAA. He's a co-founder and partner at YC. Both defendants were the children of parents who were involved with early UNIX, one at Bell Labs and NSA, and the other as founder of the Mark Williams Company. One kid got probation, community service and a fine. The other was not so fortunate. If we compare the actual damages caused by each, the result seems to violate any notion of proportionality.
- tzs 6y ago
  When you see a DoJ press release talking about someone potentially facing a very long sentence, they don't mean that the particular person being indicted is facing such a sentence. They mean that if you take the maximum possible sentence that someone could get for each individual charge, and then added up all those individual maximums, you get their press release figure. There are two big problems with that. 1. Various federal crimes are grouped for sentencing. Roughly, if one single act could be charged with N different crimes, and you are convicted for all N the sentence is not sum of the sentences for each, it is max of the sentences for each. An indictment, say, of 5 charges each with a 20 year max but that all fall in the same group would be listed as 100 years in the press release, but would really only be 20. I find it appalling that the DoJ does not take into account grouping when writing press releases. Unlike point #2 below, grouping doesn't have much of a subjective component that won't be resolved until trial. DoJ has everything needed when they write the press release to figure out what charges group. 2. The maximum listed for each charge is what someone who committed the worst imaginable instance of that crime could get. Someone who had all the various factors that can affect sentence length go against them. Unless you are doing your crime for a lot of money, as part of something like a drug cartel or the mob, people got physical hurt or there was a good chance they could have, you caused huge economic loses, and you have a serious prior criminal record, you ain't getting anywhere near the max. First time offender, not for monetary gain, no one physically hurt, not doing it as part of some larger criminal enterprise? Somewhere near the low end, with a decent chance of just a few years parole instead of jail time. Here are some articles. The first covers federal sentencing in general. The second two cover it in the context of the Swartz case and also look at each charge. 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... http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...
_jal 6y ago
99.9% of people were not him. > law enforcement did not drive him to suicide People can keep repeating this, and it will still be false. LEO and Prosecutor action was the proximate cause of his actions. You can make moral arguments that, say, the prosecutor was Just Doing His Job, and I may even agree with you. But you and everyone else are simply wrong about cause and effect, and attempting to blur that tells me more about your priors and biases than anything about the situation.
- xadhominemx 6y ago
  Aaron’s story is good example of why blaming the suicide of someone with severe depression on whatever proximate cause triggered the act is the wrong way to understand why someone takes their own life. Many suicides are prompted by trivial or very temporary situations that are not at fault.
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    That presumed that the whole trial wasn’t the cause of the mental issues. I’m sure that facing an immoral DOJ out for blood caused him a lot of stress and depression (or triggered any latent issues).
    - FDSGSG 6y ago
      It's rather well documented that Aaron had been thinking about suicide long before getting mixed up with the DOJ http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341150 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341150
      - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
        It's not clear how that addresses DoJ's highly unethical choice to stack 52 years of federal prison time.
      - vlovich123 6y ago
        Did you actually read that link? He wrote the alleged “suicide note” in a moment where he was suffering from extreme physical pain as that was his way of expressing it to give himself some mental release. On top of all of that he was dealing with getting fired which itself can be a mindfuck. To me the proximate cause 100% was the legal case against him - it inflamed any underlying issues and they just kept pressing. I could be wrong of course but I don’t think anyone will ever truly know what was happening in his head.
FDSGSG 6y ago
Actually he was offered even less, 4 months. 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... >The alternative sentence to consider is what Swartz would have received if he had agreed to plead guilty. According to Swartz’s lawyers, the prosecutors in the case offered two different pleas. First, they would agree to a sentence of four months if Swartz agreed to plead guilty to the felonies. And second, they could agree to a deal in which Swartz agreed to plead guilty, the government would argue for a 6 month sentence, and Swartz could argue for a lesser sentence (presumably including probation). In all likelihood, the judge would have then sentenced Swartz to 4 months under the 1st plea and whatever the judge thought appropriate, up to 6 months, under the second plea.
- jeltz 6y ago
  Which makes it even worse. A 4 month plea deal on a 50 year maximum sentence is clear evidence of that something is vet wrong. It either means the deal or the max sentence is wrong.
  - ryanlol 6y ago
    You’re not wrong, but “50 year maximum sentence” is off by at least an order of magnitude.
- rwmurrayVT 6y ago
  The judge is not bound by a plea agreement in federal court.
Nextgrid 6y ago
The whole concept of plea deals is insane (but then again, so is the concept of "justice" in the US) and it's sad to see it being defended here. Sidestepping the issue of the severity of his crime, the concept of "plead guilty to X and waive your rights to a fair trial" or go to a trial which is made unfair by trumped up charges (thus increasing the corresponding sentence by orders of magnitude) almost as revenge for exercising your right to a trial doesn't sound like justice to me. Either someone is guilty and the state can prove it (and is willing to expend resources to do so) or he isn't - nobody should be forced to make such a choice.
- FDSGSG 6y ago
  Nobody is defending plea deals here. Aaron was offered an excellent deal, regardless of how indefensible plea deals might be in general.
  - jeltz 6y ago
    No, he was offered a bad deal. Copyright violations very rarely result in prison for first time offenders. He also did a mild case of hacking which together might have resulted in a short sentence. But if he had gone to court I doubt he would have got more than 4-6 months, which is the same thing as the plea deal.
    - amyjess 6y ago
      It wasn't because of a copyright violation. It was because after he was booted off MIT's network for violating their TOS, he went out of his way to find another way to get back on their network by unauthorized means and resume the same activity he got kicked off for.
      - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
        In response to the question "What is the ethical justification for 52 years of stacked federal charges?", is this your final answer?
    - 6y ago
caminante 6y ago
I appreciate your perspective. This is a memorial thread with a bias to grieving and celebrating Aaron. By making your points, others appear to assume you're criticizing him for taking his life (which is not your intent or how I perceive your stance).
- xadhominemx 6y ago
  Many people use Aaron’s death as a political cudgel by essentially lying about the events leading to his suicide in order to paint him has a martyr who was murdered by cruel and vengeful prosecutors. He was in fact a severely mentally ill individual who’s death should be remembered as a tragedy resulting from severe depression, not politically motivated homicide.
MrPatan 6y ago
That's all right then

zionic 6y ago

What evidence is there the plea deal was offered? Sounds like PR by the state.

xadhominemx 6y ago
You don’t have to ask me, the information can be found on google within seconds.
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  You're offering the information, the least you could do is provide your source.
Merman_Mike 6y ago
> During plea talks held in the months before his death, federal prosecutors told Aaron Swartz and his attorney that the computer prodigy must spend six months behind bars and plead guilty to 13 federal crimes in order to resolve the criminal case short of a trial. > Swartz’s lead defense attorney, Elliot Peters, said today that both he and Swartz rejected the plea deal offered by the office of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, and instead were pushing for a trial where federal prosecutors would have been forced to publicly justify their pursuit of Swartz. First result on Google.

spijdar 6y ago

I actually feel some sympathy for both positions here. On the one hand, it's such a "no brainer" to take such a light sentence for what is legally such a "serious crime". On the other hand, though, it feels ridiculous that Aaron would have been put in jail at all for what he did. I think it's fair to say he wasn't in a good place, but it's maybe a little tone deaf to say the grief of the trial and prosecution had no role in his suicide.

xadhominemx 6y ago
Of course it had a role in his suicide, but no person who was not already very mentally ill would have ended their life in that situation. The narrative that prosecutors wanted to effectively ruin his life for his criminal offenses is just wrong.
- SirSourdough 6y ago
  They were threatening him with 50 years in jail and a million in fines or accepting an immoral (to him, and as a more broadly held belief of many) punishment with no opportunity to defend himself and the prospect of a lifelong record of serious crimes. How is that not an effort to ruin someone’s life?
  - breck 6y ago
    Plenty of great people like Mandela spent a long time in jail for unjust reasons, and continued their protest from there. I think aaronsw could have done the same except he had bad luck and wasn't in a strong place at a critical time. I don't hold the prosecutors responsible for Aaron's suicide any more than I hold myself responsible for not publicly doing more to help him. From my conversations and dealings with aaron, I believe he was willing to die for his ideas, which were correct and true and just. I hope to god someday we can build the world he envisioned where everyone, regardless of wealth or location or creed, has access to the world's best knowledge and information.
  - xadhominemx 6y ago
    I don’t think Aaron’s criminal record would have impacted his life much at all. If anything it would have burnished his credentials and credibility as an activist.
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      He wanted to run for office in the future and saw catching a felony as a risk to that goal

maccard 6y ago

From wikipedia: > On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, which increased Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines. During plea negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison, if Swartz would plead guilty to 13 federal crimes. Swartz and his lead attorney rejected that deal, opting instead for a trial in which prosecutors would have been forced to justify their pursuit of Swartz Let's be clear, this isn't "here's a slap on the wrist and we'll let it slide", this is "we're throwing the book at you on trumped up charges", and require him to plead guilty to 9 felonies to avoid a potential 50 year sentence. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._Aaron_Swartz_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
apple_innocent 6y ago
For an interesting comparison, consider the first person to be charged under CFAA. He's a co-founder and partner at YC. Both defendants were the children of parents who were involved with early UNIX, one at Bell Labs and NSA, and the other as founder of the Mark Williams Company. One kid got probation, community service and a fine. The other was not so fortunate. If we compare the actual damages caused by each, the result seems to violate any notion of proportionality.
tzs 6y ago
When you see a DoJ press release talking about someone potentially facing a very long sentence, they don't mean that the particular person being indicted is facing such a sentence. They mean that if you take the maximum possible sentence that someone could get for each individual charge, and then added up all those individual maximums, you get their press release figure. There are two big problems with that. 1. Various federal crimes are grouped for sentencing. Roughly, if one single act could be charged with N different crimes, and you are convicted for all N the sentence is not sum of the sentences for each, it is max of the sentences for each. An indictment, say, of 5 charges each with a 20 year max but that all fall in the same group would be listed as 100 years in the press release, but would really only be 20. I find it appalling that the DoJ does not take into account grouping when writing press releases. Unlike point #2 below, grouping doesn't have much of a subjective component that won't be resolved until trial. DoJ has everything needed when they write the press release to figure out what charges group. 2. The maximum listed for each charge is what someone who committed the worst imaginable instance of that crime could get. Someone who had all the various factors that can affect sentence length go against them. Unless you are doing your crime for a lot of money, as part of something like a drug cartel or the mob, people got physical hurt or there was a good chance they could have, you caused huge economic loses, and you have a serious prior criminal record, you ain't getting anywhere near the max. First time offender, not for monetary gain, no one physically hurt, not doing it as part of some larger criminal enterprise? Somewhere near the low end, with a decent chance of just a few years parole instead of jail time. Here are some articles. The first covers federal sentencing in general. The second two cover it in the context of the Swartz case and also look at each charge. 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... http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...

_jal 6y ago

99.9% of people were not him. > law enforcement did not drive him to suicide People can keep repeating this, and it will still be false. LEO and Prosecutor action was the proximate cause of his actions. You can make moral arguments that, say, the prosecutor was Just Doing His Job, and I may even agree with you. But you and everyone else are simply wrong about cause and effect, and attempting to blur that tells me more about your priors and biases than anything about the situation.

xadhominemx 6y ago
Aaron’s story is good example of why blaming the suicide of someone with severe depression on whatever proximate cause triggered the act is the wrong way to understand why someone takes their own life. Many suicides are prompted by trivial or very temporary situations that are not at fault.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  That presumed that the whole trial wasn’t the cause of the mental issues. I’m sure that facing an immoral DOJ out for blood caused him a lot of stress and depression (or triggered any latent issues).
  - FDSGSG 6y ago
    It's rather well documented that Aaron had been thinking about suicide long before getting mixed up with the DOJ http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341150 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341150
    - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
      It's not clear how that addresses DoJ's highly unethical choice to stack 52 years of federal prison time.
    - vlovich123 6y ago
      Did you actually read that link? He wrote the alleged “suicide note” in a moment where he was suffering from extreme physical pain as that was his way of expressing it to give himself some mental release. On top of all of that he was dealing with getting fired which itself can be a mindfuck. To me the proximate cause 100% was the legal case against him - it inflamed any underlying issues and they just kept pressing. I could be wrong of course but I don’t think anyone will ever truly know what was happening in his head.

FDSGSG 6y ago

Actually he was offered even less, 4 months. 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... >The alternative sentence to consider is what Swartz would have received if he had agreed to plead guilty. According to Swartz’s lawyers, the prosecutors in the case offered two different pleas. First, they would agree to a sentence of four months if Swartz agreed to plead guilty to the felonies. And second, they could agree to a deal in which Swartz agreed to plead guilty, the government would argue for a 6 month sentence, and Swartz could argue for a lesser sentence (presumably including probation). In all likelihood, the judge would have then sentenced Swartz to 4 months under the 1st plea and whatever the judge thought appropriate, up to 6 months, under the second plea.

jeltz 6y ago
Which makes it even worse. A 4 month plea deal on a 50 year maximum sentence is clear evidence of that something is vet wrong. It either means the deal or the max sentence is wrong.
- ryanlol 6y ago
  You’re not wrong, but “50 year maximum sentence” is off by at least an order of magnitude.
rwmurrayVT 6y ago
The judge is not bound by a plea agreement in federal court.

Nextgrid 6y ago

The whole concept of plea deals is insane (but then again, so is the concept of "justice" in the US) and it's sad to see it being defended here. Sidestepping the issue of the severity of his crime, the concept of "plead guilty to X and waive your rights to a fair trial" or go to a trial which is made unfair by trumped up charges (thus increasing the corresponding sentence by orders of magnitude) almost as revenge for exercising your right to a trial doesn't sound like justice to me. Either someone is guilty and the state can prove it (and is willing to expend resources to do so) or he isn't - nobody should be forced to make such a choice.

FDSGSG 6y ago
Nobody is defending plea deals here. Aaron was offered an excellent deal, regardless of how indefensible plea deals might be in general.
- jeltz 6y ago
  No, he was offered a bad deal. Copyright violations very rarely result in prison for first time offenders. He also did a mild case of hacking which together might have resulted in a short sentence. But if he had gone to court I doubt he would have got more than 4-6 months, which is the same thing as the plea deal.
  - amyjess 6y ago
    It wasn't because of a copyright violation. It was because after he was booted off MIT's network for violating their TOS, he went out of his way to find another way to get back on their network by unauthorized means and resume the same activity he got kicked off for.
    - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
      In response to the question "What is the ethical justification for 52 years of stacked federal charges?", is this your final answer?
  - 6y ago

caminante 6y ago

I appreciate your perspective. This is a memorial thread with a bias to grieving and celebrating Aaron. By making your points, others appear to assume you're criticizing him for taking his life (which is not your intent or how I perceive your stance).

xadhominemx 6y ago
Many people use Aaron’s death as a political cudgel by essentially lying about the events leading to his suicide in order to paint him has a martyr who was murdered by cruel and vengeful prosecutors. He was in fact a severely mentally ill individual who’s death should be remembered as a tragedy resulting from severe depression, not politically motivated homicide.

MrPatan 6y ago

That's all right then