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Comment by mikewarot | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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