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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

> You are correct in a way -- judges do not decide issues that do not need to be decided, and things they do say about those issues are ignored, so yes, she omitted to discuss it.

And that's a bad thing as it leaves the case more or less open to US side coming up with "We promise to put him in some VIP jail with blackjack, and hookers," and more opportunities for retrials for state attorney to attack weaker defense arguments one at a time.

Having the extradition flopped as political, would've closed the door on it for good.

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Are you saying she should have discussed it anyway? Just lob up an opinion from the magi court on a searing hot political issue regarding which according to her own reasoning anything she says isn’t binding whatsoever? Yeah, she totally could have “flopped” the extradition by doing that lol

There’s a difference, as I’m sure you’re now aware having stopped accusing her of being extremely suspect, between judgments that are simply annoying for your team, and producing utterly biased, pre-decided results that match the tie of the President that nominated you. You’ll find that the former happened here, and the latter isn’t nearly as big a problem in the UK as you seem to have assumed to be the case.

To be fair there was quite a lot of lobbing of opinions as it pertained to his guilt and ability to be prosecuted. Including: “This conduct would amount to offences in English law” and many , many other statements outlining exactly why she thought asking for information and publishing it would be considered aiding and abetting in espionage. I only got about 40 pages of skimming in, the documents is 130+ pages, but the vast majority of it was related to way the charges are felt to be appropriate in his case and very little evidence from the defense other than their broad objections.

> To be fair there was quite a lot of lobbing of opinions as it pertained to his guilt and ability to be prosecuted.

There's a difference between legally meaningful findings and lobbing opinion on legally non-germane questions.

> Including: “This conduct would amount to offences in English law”

That's a determination the court is called on to make in an extradition case under Section 137 of the Extradition Act.

I think maybe that determining the defense's evidence as not "legally meaning findings" constitutes an a opinion of some kind, even if only through exclusion. I mean 130 pages on why he is guilty does not quite say: We were only interested in making a mental health determination as some of the comments seem to suggest. Then again, maybe there is much more there that I did not read or understand properly.

The conduct being refereed to is part of the issue many people are having here. As the defense argued the conduct is that of an investigative journalist. If such conduct constitutes an offense in the law, then some are worried that there is precedent to charge a wider range of conduct then previously though possible. Weather this is true or not remains to be seen I guess. Either way its a meaningful determination that this judge made.

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