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> What I was trying to say above is that a prosecutor's goal is to prosecute as many cases as fully as possible. They do not consider whether it is meritorious

by SEMW 14y ago

> What I was trying to say above is that a prosecutor's goal is to prosecute as many cases as fully as possible. They do not consider whether it is meritorious to pursue a case according to some outside moral standard, that's not their job. I have no idea what the situation is in the US. But here in England that's just not true. The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service)'s job is not to bring all the prosecutions that it believes it can win. It's to bring all prosecutions that it believes it can win that it's in the public interest to be brought. (http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/code_for_crown_prosecutors/ http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/code_for_crown_prosecutor...) The result is that CPS discretion is an important part of the system. And has the side-effect that the legislature has less incentive to narrow the scope of offences, since they believe (rightly or wrongly) they can rely on the CPS to not bring prosecutions where it wouldn't make sense to do so. (Hence e.g. there's little pressure to amend the Sexual Offences Act with US-style 'romeo and juliet' laws to protect teenage couples who are technically both sexually assaulting each other, since the CPS guidelines (http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/rape_and_sexual_offences/youths/ http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/rape_and_sexual_offences/...) in practice have the same effect). Whether this system is better or worse than one where the prosecutor doesn't use discretion, but offences are defined more strictly, is an interesting discussion.

betterunix 14y ago
The situation in the US is this: prosecutors advance their careers by winning cases. It makes no difference whether or not the cases serve the public interest or even if those who are convicted are guilty. There are a lot of people in America -- possibly a majority -- who love the "law and order" approach to government and who will vote for a lawyer-turned-politician who runs on a right-wing platform and points to his history of throwing people in prison. If you want to see just how out-of-control this can get, read about the Kern County child sex abuse prosecutions from the 1980s, where one prosecutor proudly put dozens of innocent men and women in prison for crimes that never happened. There is also an established system of prosecuting people the government does not like, and of robbing them of their ability to build a good defense -- usually by freezing their assets before they have been convicted, and building enormous cases against them that overwhelm their attorneys. I suspect Swartz was a victim of these tactics, probably because the government wanted to drive home the message that human knowledge must remain locked behind university firewalls and that hacking is a heinous offense. I would not put it past them to include Swartz' suicide in future propaganda about copyrights, as evidence that copyright infringement leads people to depression and suicide.

by SEMW 14y ago

betterunix 14y ago

The situation in the US is this: prosecutors advance their careers by winning cases. It makes no difference whether or not the cases serve the public interest or even if those who are convicted are guilty. There are a lot of people in America -- possibly a majority -- who love the "law and order" approach to government and who will vote for a lawyer-turned-politician who runs on a right-wing platform and points to his history of throwing people in prison. If you want to see just how out-of-control this can get, read about the Kern County child sex abuse prosecutions from the 1980s, where one prosecutor proudly put dozens of innocent men and women in prison for crimes that never happened. There is also an established system of prosecuting people the government does not like, and of robbing them of their ability to build a good defense -- usually by freezing their assets before they have been convicted, and building enormous cases against them that overwhelm their attorneys. I suspect Swartz was a victim of these tactics, probably because the government wanted to drive home the message that human knowledge must remain locked behind university firewalls and that hacking is a heinous offense. I would not put it past them to include Swartz' suicide in future propaganda about copyrights, as evidence that copyright infringement leads people to depression and suicide.