Trying to force him to make a deal.
Trying to force him to make a deal.
Conrad Black has written extensively on the subject.
The really insidious thing about this tactic is this: assume you’re innocent of a crime, but you’ve been charge with 50 counts of something, each of which might land you in prison for ten or more years. You’re offered a plea bargain that will net you maybe a year in prison and a fine. Now you’ve got to ask yourself: do I plead guilty, and take the infamy of a felony conviction, or pursue my rights, knowing I’m innocent, and run the risk of having my life completely ruined?
“...the feds have used certain techniques that virtually assure convictions of both the innocent and the guilty, the wealthy and the poor, the violent drug dealer and the white collar defendant, indifferent to the niceties of “due process of law,” particularly the right to effective assistance of legal counsel.
“In order to prevent a defendant from retaining a defense team of his choice, federal prosecutors will first freeze his assets, even though a jury has yet to find them to have been illegally obtained.
“They then bring prosecutions of almost unimaginable complexity, assuring that the financially hobbled defendant’s diminished legal team (or, as is often the case, his court-appointed lawyer) will be too overwhelmed to mount an adequate defense.”
(Conrad Black is mentioned here BTW.)
A little bit of truth in advertising might be helpful, if unexpected, from the media.
The statue doesn't matter - what counts is the sentencing guidelines. The sentences contained in the laws passed by congress are mere political theater. A judge is going to have to come up with extraordinary justification if he tries to vary from the much lower dictated guidelines.
“And it was all for downloading millions of academic documents that were available at the M.I.T. Library for a small fee. “
The small fee varied from 13 to 39 dollars. So he stole several tens of millions of dollars worth of someone’s property.
He felt that some types of property should not be owned, but shared with all, unfortunately the owner of the property did not agree.
Federal neo-Nazi prosecutors get away with this crap because Congress refuses to stop it. Congress could rein in these neo-Nazis tomorrow, but it won’t because it suits their quest for money and power.
It now falls to ordinary citizens to end this abuse of power. I know that a number of FReepers don’t like what happened in Libya with Khaddhafi, but the citizens there sure ended the abuse by decorating lampposts with politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, generals and mercenaries.
When I was in Law School I once started an answer to a professor’s question with, “Well, common sense would tell you....” I was shot down immediately and the professor made a comment something along the line that “common sense was not applicable to the law.”
Yeah, no kidding.
Prosecutors do this all the time, hell, it is such a threat to your liberty, if a private citizen did that to someone they would go to jail for assault or harassment or both.
at the same time our Government spends millions in schools fighting “Bullying”
While it does need to be looked at, my daddy taught me from a young age: Don’t start none, and there won’t be none, son.
Meanwhile Jon Corzine walks free
I was raised from the mid ‘50’s....to respect law and order; courts and cops.
Today......I have as much respect for the courts as I do for cops.....which is .......zero. Nada. Zilch.
They brought it upon themselves. To Hell with all of them.
These guys go out of their way to ruin a productive member of society but look the other way when it comes to illegal aliens. Then they go home and pat themselves on the back. The system is broken.
While everyone was watching NBA and NFL ...
The commies plotted to infiltrate all the institutions, Gramsci style.
The commies plotted to gain control of guns and ammunition -- still in progress.
The commies plotted to gain control of water, for irrigation, for drinking, for watering lawns and gardens -- in progress.
The commies plotted to gain control of K-12 education (they already had control of colleges and universities).
The commies plotted to gain control of food production, distribution, and consumption.
And on, and on, the commies plot to gain control of everything essential to life and liberty.
And the commies plotted to gain control of all research information. Swartz, a budding commie himself, stumbled onto that plot, and experienced an epiphany. Therefore, he had to be eliminated.
Reads like a spy/thriller, almost. If only it were fiction.
"JSTOR -- the only plausible entity "harmed" by Aaron's acts -- pled "no foul." JSTOR did not want Swartz prosecuted. It settled any possible civil claims against Swartz with the simple promise that he return what he had downloaded. Swartz did. JSTOR went away."
"But the government did not. In the weeks before his death, the government reaffirmed what they had been insisting upon for the 18 months before: jail, a felony conviction, and a bankrupting fine, or else Swartz was going to face a bankrupting trial."
“We fully deserve the nation we have and are handing down to our children.”
Yeah, I bet lots of Kapos said the same thing.