Anonymous hacker faces 16 years in prison, while Steubenville rapists walk free | Hacker News Reader

Anonymous hacker faces 16 years in prison, while Steubenville rapists walk free

rt.com

29 pointsJerry220 comments

This outcome is blatantly wrong from any way you look at the story. How can we help fix this?

There are few details in the story, so I can't say this for sure, but 16 years is probably greatly exaggerated. That sounds like a "press release" sentence. DoJ press releases when they indict someone greatly exaggerate the potential sentences, and the press uncritical reports those exaggerated sentences. They are often off by up to an order of magnitude from what is realistic.

See the article "Crime: Whale Sushi. Sentence: ELEVENTY MILLION YEARS" at Popehat for a good explanation of how this happens.

[1] https://popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-el...

This outcome isn't an outcome yet, so I don't know how it can possibly be blatantly wrong. The hacker has not been sentenced yet, the rape perpetrators were. Comparing a "possible lifetime + cancer" sentence to an actually imposed one is poor journalism - please check out either https://popehat.com/2013/03/26/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-shitt... or https://popehat.com/2015/10/08/bad-reporting-on-matthew-keys... for an explanation why this kind of reporting is just wrong.

But even if you don't read those blog posts, consider this - the reported sentences are the maximum possible under the statute. From there, you would apply contextual circumstances - what the actual circumstances of the crime were, criminal history, admission of guilt, likelihood of recidivism, danger to society, whatever else the judge might find important, and adjust the sentence. Unless you think the hacker has undoubtedly committed the most egregious hacking crime, then he's not getting the maximum sentence.

And is the outcome for the rape perpetrators "blatantly wrong"? I don't really know the specifics of the case. Just quickly reading this CNN report - http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/17/justice/ohio-steubenville-... - you can find out they're minors, they were remorseful, the rape was not violent, and most importantly, jail was not the only punishment they received - they were put on the sex offenders registry, which will most likely ruin their chances at having a decent life.

Who gives a shit if they are minors? They still ruined a girls life.

Minors shoot and kill people all the time, too. In US culture and jurisprudence, we tend to weigh heavily factors that diminish offenders capacity to distinguish right from wrong, and teenagers have both diminished judgement and impulse control capabilities that are at their lifetime low.

We generally try, at least ostensibly, to recognize that long sentences serve no practical purpose when applied to someone who will in just a few years be for many purposes a biologically different person.

How does "tried as an adult" fit into that view?

I've never understood why you would go to the trouble of having special juvenile criminal sentencing ranges and juvenile courts when oftentimes a juvenile does something really bad he is tried as an adult (even more so in the UK, it seems). It would be more straightforward to just exclude murder and other grave crimes from juvenile court altogether.

Yeah, it's pretty fucked up.

Minors are more susceptible to change and will likely end up being different people by the time they are 30, while if you had a much older perpetrator the mentality is probably more ingrained.

Easy! All you have to do is charge more juveniles as adults.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com