Laws only matter if you're not rich.
Laws only matter if you're not rich.
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/55039106
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34 comments
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Not that OP is in any way wrong, or does this in ANY way excuse the monstrous crime the feds and the system as a whole did to a beautiful person like Aaron, who just was trying to fucking help, but there is a totally additional pragmatic lesson to take from the saga:
Aaron Swartz was looking at 36 years because he got all impassioned about “I didn’t do anything WRONG, I won’t take the plea deal.” It only became a life-ending prospect because he wanted to make a point and fight the feds. And when you fight the feds, they fight back.
You CAN be just a person who’s got justice on your side, and fight the feds, and win. Daniel Ellsberg did it. Daniel Bernstein did it. But… offhand, I can’t think of anyone else. And both of them still had powerful friends.
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The prosecutor has a history of agreeing to leniency in plea deals then going for incredibly harsh penalties after.
I don't believe a plea deal would have made a difference, unfortunately. A different US AG and I think it would have made a difference.
Well, a different AG and I doubt it would have been remotely the same case, if it even went to actual prosecution in that scenario.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz#Plea_negotiations
Swartz's attorney, Elliot Peters, stated that prosecutors at one point offered a plea deal of four months in prison and pleading guilty to 13 charges, and warned that if Swartz rejected the deal, future deals would be less attractive;[45] and that two days before Swartz's death, that "Swartz would have to spend six months in prison and plead guilty to 13 charges if he wanted to avoid going to trial."[46] Under the six-month deal, after Swartz pled guilty to the 13 charges, the government would have argued for a six-month sentence, and Swartz would have argued for a lesser sentence; the judge would then be free to assign whatever sentence the judge thought appropriate, up to six months.[47] Peters later filed a complaint with the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility, stating that if Swartz didn't plead guilty, Heymann "threatened that he would seek for Mr. Swartz to serve seven years in prison," a difference in duration Peters asserts went "far beyond" the disparity encouraged by the plea-bargain portion of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.[32]
Andy Good, Swartz's initial lawyer, told The Boston Globe: "I told Heymann the kid was a suicide risk. His reaction was a standard reaction in that office, not unique to Steve. He said, 'Fine, we'll lock him up.' I'm not saying they made Aaron kill himself. Aaron might have done this anyway. I'm saying they were aware of the risk, and they were heedless."[48]
Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. "JSTOR signed off on it," he said, "but MIT would not."[48]
I don't know where you're getting this idea that people can agree to a plea deal and then the prosecution can request harsh penalties anyway. Well, I mean they can, but no one would, because the judge would yell at them and then ignore the request. That's just not how it works.
Edit: Actually, I don't even see how the prosecution in this case could have managed to try to sneak their way into getting the judge to feel like sentencing the Swartz to more than the deal, as they did with Donald Gonczy. The terms of the plea agreement specifically said that the judge could only impose up to six months.
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I'm aware.
Carmen Ortiz, the US AG overseeing, has arranged plea deals with leniency and then gone for harsher punishment with the judge.
Which is why I say it may have made no difference - she may have gone for harsher penalties anyway, with the same result.
She was an absolutely awful pick IMO. The worst type of person for the office she held.
Edit: Look her up on Wikipedia and find the Donald Gonczy case.
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What case(s) did this happen in? Where can I read more about this?
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See edit, sorry didn't include that at the time.
She is a perfect example of democrats trying to be "tough on crime" in the worst possible ways.
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Carmen Ortiz, the US AG overseeing, has arranged plea deals with leniency and then gone for harsher punishment with the judge.
Any ones other than Donald Gonczy?
If a prosecutor is trying to vigorously prosecute, that's not really an imbalance in the system. They're not supposed to be fair about it, any more than the defense counsel is supposed to be "fair" about both sides of the issue, while defending the person. The problem is when the prosecutor's vigor isn't matched on the defense side (which does happen for systemic reasons, and is a massive injustice).
Why do you think a prosecutor who tries to prosecute people is "the worst type of person" for the job? I would think the worst type would be someone who fabricates evidence or something, followed at some distance by someone who's not very vigorous about prosecuting real crime so that someone dangerous is kicking around loose on the street.
It sounds like in that one case, the prosecution recommended exactly the agreed-upon plea agreement, but also made statements at trial that were so aggressive that it amounted to undermining the plea agreement. And so, a judge fixed it, because that's injustice. That's how the system is supposed to work, I think. Is it more than just the one person?
Also what does any of this have to do with Democrats? Is she a Democrat? Where did that part come from?
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There are quite a few examples of her stretching the limits of legality, yes.
They're not supposed to be fair about it
Well, this is where I firmly disagree, so we can end the discussion here. This is the sort of approach that benefits only the most wealthy, and firmly punishes anyone without the wealth to get the best lawyers possible.
To me, this is a perfect example of the complete disfunction of the justice system.
Also what does any of this have to do with Democrats?
She is a Democrat, yes, and an Obama appointee as part of the effort to appear tough on crime and appeal to the conservative voters. So its perfectly relevant IMO.
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There are quite a few examples of her stretching the limits of legality, yes.
Such as? You said she "arranged plea deals with leniency" et cetera and I'm curious what the other ones were.
Well, this is where I firmly disagree, so we can end the discussion here. This is the sort of approach that benefits only the most wealthy, and firmly punishes anyone without the wealth to get the best lawyers possible.
Oh, I wasn't saying the system was at all fair. It's horribly rigged against defendants, with that as just one of the many ways. I'm just saying that the solution of having prosecutors not really try to prosecute, or decide the justice of the case themselves and then prosecute vigorously or not depending on whether they think before trial that the person is guilty, is not a good fix for that system, and it's weird to accuse a prosecutor of being "the worst kind" because she was prosecuting people at the limits of her ability.
I think properly funding and resourcing legal aid, getting rid of cash bail, and removing some of the tools like extended detention before a hearing that prosecutors use to put pressure on people, would all be necessary steps before we have something approaching justice. You just picked kind of a weird part of the system to identify as the problem, I think.
I won't make you continue to talk about it if you don't want.
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I've got plenty to do aside from have a detailed discussion.
She is an extreme example of the exact issues being brought up. She chose to make this a case, local prosecutors intended to just drop it. JSTOR and MIT were going to drop it. She historically has pushed extreme narratives around evidence. There are plenty of cases out there showcasing her behavior, you're welcome to look them up. You can even find a few more references in another comment I made here
My opinion remains the same - I dont know that it would have made a difference. She wanted to make a name for herself, the people never mattered to her.
You can look up motel caswell. How she went after teamsters for picketing top chef WITH RACKETEERING charges. How federal judges have pointed out this was prosecutorial discretion, and how she wanted to make a name for herself.
But I have zero interest in a back and forth over my opinion of Ortiz and her role in Swartz's death. All to gain higher status for her political goals, what actually happened be damned.
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I never asked for a detailed discussion. You said, "Carmen Ortiz, the US AG overseeing, has arranged plea deals with leniency and then gone for harsher punishment with the judge." and I asked for details, and you went all the way to Timbuktu in the ensuing discussion trying to avoid giving an additional example beyond Donald Gonczy. I didn't make you do that.
Of course the prosecution team fucked him. I'm not trying to stick up for them, they basically harassed him to death and fuck them for doing it. I just like the truth, and just because the "bad guys" you're presenting line up with who the bad guys are supposed to be, doesn't give you the right to be slanty about what happened. They offered him a six-month plea deal with flexibility for the judge to give less, but not more. That's what happened. Trying to lie about what happened because it lines up with how you want to perceive the outcome isn't doing Swartz any favors.
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Well, he didnt do anything wrong. And he was killed for saying so. I dont think it is in any way productive to point out that he could have backed down and conform. Conformism is one reason we‘re looking at a worldwide fascist push.
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Yeah. It's heartbreaking. The same integrity that led him to be such a visionary with what tiny time he had, also led him not to bend to the system, which then hesitated not an instant to destroy him.
All I'm saying is it's okay to be a visionary and also pick your battles and be strategic. But I'm not trying to say he did wrong. If you have to pick one or the other, sticking to your guns to the end is better than giving up on the visionary stuff when it gets real. A thousand times over.
Edit: And, for some reason I don't really understand, Alexei Navalny gets a pass to me, for going back to Russia when he surely knew he'd probably be killed. I think the difference is that Navalny didn't have a middle path. But... IDK. Maybe he, like Swartz, just thought my "middle path" was a bunch of bullshit, and wanted no part of it.
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That system desperately needs to be destroyed. We can live without billionaires and we should.
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You mean like Trump is doing? That's what he's doing, destroying the systems of federal law enforcement and the government being in charge of everything. And, just like in more or less every country where there's no particular "democratic" machine to keep everything in check, the rich people can now take over unfettered by anything even nominally limiting them.
I think a lot of people tend to think in terms of "FBI is evil, destroy the FBI," for pretty understandable reasons, without thinking through the "Okay what replaces the FBI? What happens next?" part of the planning. And likewise for political parties, for media empires, and so on.
Personally I think that a lot of the answer is in giving political power back to the unions. Stop the entire abstraction of having a class of "politicians" who have a big professional organization devoted to maintaining their power, and instead, have powerful unions organized by the people who are part of them, who keep themselves sharp by fighting with the capitalist class for a fair share, and then have those be the people who are determining who gets to be on the ballot, who is taking part in the debate, and et cetera. But keep the democratic systems intact obviously. I have no idea how it would work out in practice, but it seems pretty realistic in the long run to be able to do, and I think if we did that, the fact that there was an FBI and a federal court system would all of a sudden not lead to all this "cross the boss and God help you" type of behavior by it.
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I agree with your second part, not the first. Trump is helping oligarchs pull more money and power upward. All this needs to go.
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You said the system needs to be destroyed. Trump is destroying the system.
What are you proposing, that's more nuanced than destroying the system? Destroying "the system" in terms of federal law enforcement and US government, at least, won't suddenly mean that powerful people all of a sudden don't have power. It takes a specific system to prevent people from becoming in charge of networks of other people, whatever details surround how that happens, and then wielding their power without limitations.
I don't know, maybe I am misunderstanding what you're proposing, and if I knew more about what you wanted to do I could speak more directly to it. What are you wanting to destroy, what do you want things to look like?
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I‘m sorry. Whatever you‘re trying to say is not coming through. What trump is doing is the same all fascists als billionaires have been doing for the last thirty years, just accellerated. They build up walls against comptetition and destruct safeguards against authoritarianism.
What i meant was the system that profits off hard working people and supplies only the rich minority.
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I don’t know, maybe I am misunderstanding what you’re proposing, and if I knew more about what you wanted to do I could speak more directly to it. What are you wanting to destroy, what do you want things to look like?
The core of my comment wasn't "say"ing something, it was asking you a question. The system is fucked, yes. How are you proposing to fix it?
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There is no fixing currently. We need to take out billionaires funds. They’ve taken over public opinion by corrupting the media and buying governments. They own essential supply lines in a lot of countries.
What we need is immediately turn essentials over to the people. Food, water, electricity, heat, transportation, living. No houses can stay empty while people are homeless. There can not be for profit companies controlling the food supply. Essentials are not for profit. The media also may not be privatized. Either journalist coops or nonprofits.
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34 comments