Treasure Hunter Notches 5th Year in Prison for Refusing to Forfeit His Loot | Hacker News Reader

Treasure Hunter Notches 5th Year in Prison for Refusing to Forfeit His Loot

nytimes.com

He has several times petitioned for his release, including a motion in 2017 to terminate his contempt sanctions, claiming that his imprisonment violates a federal law that limits to 18 months the amount of time an uncooperative witness can be held.
In his rejection of the motion, Judge Algenon L. Marbley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio wrote that the law did not apply to Mr. Thompson, because his case concerned “objects of economic value.”
“The utility of Mr. Thompson’s assets as evidence is almost beside the point; it is the economic value of the treasure that the Court seeks,” Judge Marbley wrote. “Mr. Thompson was therefore not merely ordered to testify or provide information.”

Mr. Golden said the case had become “a personality thing between individuals.”

5 Years in prison because you're stubborn? Wow!

Imagine actually finding buried treasure and not being allowed to keep it

He didn't share any of the loot with the investors that bankrolled the expedition. Sounds to me that he deserves his time inside.

It sounds like the investors don’t want to share they want all of it

I don't know the story here because of the paywall but there's another take on this. An friend of mine who's an archeologist and is specialised in boat anchors was telling me that what makes the job hard is the looting. Treasure hunters would often damage a shipwrecks to get things out and take things that are needed by archeologist to a point where identifying the boat can't be possible anymore. This unfortunately happens quite often.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/13/feds-c...

Was the story from when he disappeared.

There is a book titled Shadow Divers (I would recommend) that goes into this a bit. The book tells the story of wreck divers who find a U-boat not far from New Jersey.

The story echos your friend's concern. Wreck divers will remove anything they can from these sunken vessels; placards, insignia, gauges, etc. They will also damage the vessel in order to make room to continue exploring.

The German government was also not happy with the book's protagonists because they deem sunken vessels as graves and believe they should remain undisturbed.

Or as the attorney formerly handling the case said it’s become... “A personality thing between individuals”

To be honest, there should be some limits on how long a judge can hold you in contempt to avoid them abusing their power by taking defendant actions as personal.

There are limits, according to the article. 18 months. The judge is choosing to ignore the statute because, well, he is allowed to. The nitpicking over the minutiae is pretty much why we have a legal system.

Yeah, that’s what I was referring to. It appears that he has no higher authority to appeal to because the judge has unilaterally said “the defendant is not a witness” thus the 18mo limit does not apply.

From the 2014 article: “As a child in his small hometown of Defiance, Ohio, Thompson displayed an intelligence that was as remarkable as his sometimes maddening refusal to do anything the normal way.”

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