3 ms·
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The only way he didn't face 35 years of prison time is if he was prepared to plea guilty despite believing firmly and with sound reason tha
by RyanMcGreal 13y ago
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The only way he didn't face 35 years of prison time is if he was prepared to plea guilty despite believing firmly and with sound reason that he was not a criminal.
As I've argued elsewhere [1], "A prosecutor forcing someone to admit guilt by threatening a life-destroying cruel and unusual punishment if they do not admit it - why, that is the very essence of using torture to extract a confession!"
[1] http://quandyfactory.com/blog/103 http://quandyfactory.com/blog/103
- rayiner 13y agoWrong, wrong, wrong. Many of the counts would have been grouped under the guidelines.
- danielweber 13y agoEven if he went to trial and lost on absolutely every charge, he was not facing 35 years. Not even 10 years, or 5 years.
- tptacek 13y agoNo, this is not in fact how it worked. Swartz's own lawyer wrote up the range of possible sentences presuming Swartz refused to plead out, ranging from "no custodial sentence at all" (his lawyer's own expectation) to 7 years on the outside, if the prosecutors carried out all their threats and the court sided with them entirely and Swartz had been convicted on all counts. Once again: Swartz's own lawyer wrote that he believed it unlikely that Swartz would do any time in prison even if he was convicted after pleading not guilty. The "35 years" thing is entirely fictional. Popehat has a fantastic blog post on why this fiction exists and how it is misunderstood.
- wglb 13y agoBut the one thing that I think was the hardest for him to accept was to be classified as a felon.