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He did run it by a lawyer; he is a lawyer. A law professor, in fact, at Columbia. And he teaches 1L Criminal Law and one of the topics in that class is the "rul
by hkhanna 14y ago
He did run it by a lawyer; he is a lawyer. A law professor, in fact, at Columbia. And he teaches 1L Criminal Law and one of the topics in that class is the "rule of lenity."
Professor Wu's suggestion that the Administration rely on the rule of lenity is not as off-base as you suggest. Although it's true that it is a rule for construing criminal statutes applied by courts, the administration needs to construe statutes, too, before they can decide whether to enforce them in specific situations.
Professor Wu is suggesting, I think, that the Administration should use the rule of construction that ambiguous criminal law should be read in favor of the defendant to say that it's too ambiguous to be enforced in Swartz-like cases in any principled way.
- anigbrowl 14y agoWell, he knows more about it than I do, I'm sure, but I'm not persuaded by the argument he's presented here. Put yourself in the shoes of the injured party, and ask yourself how you'd feel if people investigating your case told you not to worry about it, even though you had spend a lot of money on hardening your servers and even though losing control of your servers to the extent that people could post fake stories on your website kind of damages your standing as a major newspaper. After reading the indictment, with Keys' encouragement to his co-conspirator to 'go fuck some shit up' I don't see how a prosecutor could do other than indict him. That does not mean the prosecution is trying to put him in jail for 25 years, and Wu knows that full well. 'Sharpie,' the anonymous member he corresponded with over IRC, did limit him(?) self to just joking around, posting the fake news story about 'Chippy 1337,' and I suspect that if caught he would receive only a misdemeanor charge. But for all Keys knew, he might have engaged in far more destructive acts.