https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/anonymous-...
"Online vigilante Deric Lostutter helped expose the cover-up in the Steubenville rape case. Now he’s facing more jail time than the convicted rapists."
Yep, the rapists got 1 and 2 years for the rape, and the hacker got 2 years for that hack. Clearly shows what the society's priorities are.
That's one way to read it. The other way to read it is "The rapists, being minors, were convicted and sentenced under laws that apply to Juveniles. The vigilante, being an adult, is being tried under laws for adults."
I'm not sure how you would convince society to do away with separate rules for minors. It's very rare for a justice system to decide that a 16 year old should be tried as a 21 year old.
the real situation is opposite - it is pretty exceptional to not charge 16 years olds as adults in a rape case.
Separate rules for minors is a right thing to do up to a reasonable limit - a 16 year old thinking it is ok to joyride somebody's car is one thing, whereis to murder or to rape - it is very different.
With kids we expect to rehabilitate them faster.
The long version: You may no see how it matters, but the reasoning is sound:
If you are going to be lenient on juveniles because they are not fully mature enough mentally to contemplate the full effect of their actions, why make certain actions exempt from contemplation?
> This does quite clearly show what the people in the justice system think is worse: an adult hacker vigilante is worse than a 16 yo rapist.
The criminal justice system does not evaluate the actions of a criminal in isolation, they largely take into account the intention behind the action (Look up Mens Rea).
You are just putting two outcomes next to each other for comparison, while the reality is that the intention and maturity of the mind behind those actions are what decides the judgment.
Should someone with the mental capacity of a 5 year old commit some violent crime, do you still think we should judge them as we do with a normal adult?
The ultimate problem with your argument is that the justice system is not about getting revenge on criminals. It's about making society safer.
When someone commits a crime we remove them from society for the period we think it will take to rehabilitate them[1], and ensure that they aren't able to harm society further during the time they are not rehabilitated.
The reasoning for juveniles to get a lower sentence is because we, collectively, think that it will be faster to rehabilitate a minor than an adult.
> I doubt you would get the same result if civilians were asked.
You'd be surprised: leave gender out of it and ask about "violent crime" and most parents would agree that the court should be more lenient on kids. That's because, as parents (and former kids) we know that kids make incredibly poor decisions.
Phrasing the question as "would you prefer your kids rapist to get off with a slap on the wrist" would get the response you want.
[1] Whether or not this is successful is irrelevant as we cannot know the success at the time of sentencing.
You really want to go down that shaky rabbit hole? What if a hacker deliberately caused the collision of 2 subway trains, killing everyone on both trains? Is he still going to jail for only a year because he didn't actually physically harm someone?
And if you're going to say he didn't physically drive the trains into each other, how far does that rabbit hole go? Can anyone be held responsible for any action performed with a tool at that point? "Your honor, I just caused a collision of his head with this hammer, it was the hammer that killed him, not me." Oh, he swung the hammer, so that counts as "physical harm". What about guns? "I just caused a collision of his head with the bullet, the bullet killed him, not me." Yes, he would have pulled the trigger, but he didn't physically shove the bullet into the guy (by your definition). Or if pulling the trigger makes him liable, then the guy pressing the keys to run the programs blah blah blah that cause the trains to collide means he caused it.
In your case, he engineered the deaths of the people on those trains, he's liable for them. This ain't hard.
However, Deric played no role in exposing the rape itself. The article you cited even points out that Deric learned about the Steubenville rape case reading the NYT article about it. None of the evidence that Deric and the other members of Anon hacked and released were used at the juvenile court proceedings due to evidentiary and due process issues (and for that reason would similarly have been excluded if the defendants had been tried as adults), and (per the linked article) a lot of what they posted wasn't even relevant to the rape or the coverup; it was simply intended to embarrass and harass. At least one of the (adult) hacking victims was not involved with the coverup; they simply had the misfortune to be mentioned in the news articles as being involved with the case, and if it satisfies your moral umbrage, that is why Deric was sentenced to 2 years.
[1] https://corriganlawohio.com/felonies-in-juvenile-court. Generally, for a rape charge, in Ohio the youth defendant must have aggravating circumstances to be tried as an adult, such as a previous violent juvie commitment or the use of a firearm in the commission of the crime, which did not apply to this case. Note that these laws were passed as a response to juvenile defendants being treated as adults, on the premise that juvenile defendants are less in control of their actions and therefore should face less punishment than adults.
We know for a fact that young men's brains aren't developed as fast as young women's brains. Either the passed law wasn't passed because "juvenile are less in control of their actions" or it is a clear case of not looking at the science they cite since 50 % of juveniles are less in control than the other 50%. I'm personally sure this is all about society being angry about juveniles being punished too harshly and the justice system seeing this as a way out instead of actually ruling as they should: on an individual basic. As it is now they cite a scientific basic and don't actually follow it at all.
Also IMO it does also show that the justice system is out of touch. If you asked civilians I'm convinced that close to 100% would say rape should be punished harsher than the hacking and the hackers punishment is the one that is too hard.
And it does make sense of the difference in sentencing. Deric's crime was related to the rape case, but nothing they did affected it. They didn't garner any new indictments or convictions, they just stirred the shit.
but, a rapist hurt (in theory) 1 person.
A "Hacker" can hurt hundreds or thousands or millions of people...
I'm honestly not sure how to equate fair punishment in that space.
Just imagine that you have to choose - either you're going to be raped or you computer is going to be hacked.