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Comment by impossiblefork | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree. If the prosecutor isn't going after this, there must be a lack of conclusive evidence.

As I remarked elsewhere, if the pill bottle was in fact KCl, there is no certain evidence pinning the vitamin D on the wife. It's obvious that it's her, but it's not proven.

Consequently a private prosecution would be useless. Also, private prosecutions for these kinds of things are unheard of, just as they are in the US.

If things are as I believe, it is not going to be possible to secure a conviction. There's reason for the very strongest suspicions, but still a step away from what's required for a conviction.

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> just as they are in the US.

This is incorrect. Far from unheard of, the civil justice system in the US is, in fact, frequently used as a secondary route of recourse by private persons, regardless of the existence or outcome of a criminal prosecution. The legal test used to determine liability (in civil justice) is different from the legal test used to determine culpability (in criminal justice), and therefore, you can also have mixed outcomes. Furthermore, civil law in the US focuses on "making the plaintiff whole", vs criminal law which focuses on sanctioning the defendent. As a result, civil cases might be the only way in which a victim of a crime could get any form of compensation from the perpetrator.

One extremely high-profile case in the US was, of course, that of OJ Simpson [1], who was found not guilty of murder in a criminal case, but liable in a civil one, for the exact same action.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_trial_of_O._J._Simpson

Yes, but private prosecutions in Sweden are not civil cases. Civil cases we have, just as you do, and they were very accessible, but private prosecutions are something different.

Since it was in quotes I assumed that was a euhemism.

Yeah, I thought they were referring to vigilantism.

Right. A prosecution is about whether somebody committed a crime, the standard required is "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" and the consequence is punishment, for example a fine, prison time or, if you're barbarians, physical punishment such as whipping or execution.

O J wasn't send to jail as a result of the civil lawsuit, he went to jail because he's a crook.

In the US they're called private criminal complaints. For more serious crimes, they usually require the prosecutor's office to approve then handle them. They almost always decline though.

I'm not familiar with the Swedish justice system, so it's still a little unclear exactly what you're referring to. But if you mean a true private prosecution [1], these aren't so much "unheard of" in the US as just outright forbidden federally (and in most states). This gets very complicated very quickly though, because each state in the US has its own set of rules, procedures, statutes, constitutions, and court systems for handling justice re: state crimes.

At any rate, sorry for the misinterpretation. To be completely honest, I wasn't even aware that private prosecution was an actual thing, I assumed it was just a mistranslation or colloquialism for a civil tort case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution#United_Sta...

> I don't agree. If the prosecutor isn't going after this, there must be a lack of conclusive evidence.

If the prosecutor has done their job properly, then yes.

> It's obvious that it's her, but it's not proven.

I think in most countries this would be a contradiction in terms. But sure, in Sweden this can happen and could well be a fair description of the situation.

Largely this happens because we don't have the jury system. So, at least on appeal, a few career judges hear the case and one of them has to write a judgement detailing why they think it's proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. When it becomes difficult to do that (without the judge in question "making a fool of themselves" in the eyes of other career judges) people tend to be acquitted. Many of them probably would have been convicted by a jury.

We have the nämndemän, which are sort of jury.

But there is still reasonable doubt. It is in fact possible, if unlikely, that she didn't do. I think it's very unlikely, and it's unfortunate that we can't convict, but we have not proven that she poisoned him with vitamin D, and there is no direct evidence that she did.

> We have the nämndemän, which are sort of jury.

I don't agree. On appeal there are only two "jurors" ("nämndemän"), and they can be outvoted by the three career judges. Also, a real jury doesn't have to explain their reasoning in writing.

The difference is huge in this kind of case.

> But there is still reasonable doubt. It is in fact possible, if unlikely, that she didn't do. I think it's very unlikely, and it's unfortunate that we can't convict, but we have not proven that she poisoned him with vitamin D, and there is no direct evidence that she did.

Hard to say without knowing the contents of that small brown bottle and how it was procured. One reason I would consider private prosecution is to find out.

It must have been tested. If it weren't KCl, then why would there be no prosecution?

If it were vitamin D, it'd be a very short hearing.

>I don't agree. On appeal there are only two "jurors" ("nämndemän"), and they can be outvoted by the three career judges. Also, a real jury doesn't have to explain their reasoning in writing.

Yes, but is that actually good? Isn't it better to have reasoned judgements? That people explain carefully, why they've determined things as they have, so that their reasoning can be questioned?

If there's an unaccountable jury which doesn't have to justify itself, then I can't trust the judgements of the courts. They need to justify themselves, because we have set them there as representatives for ourselves.

But surely the prosecutor has tried to figure out how the brown bottle was obtained? Surely questions about this were asked during interviews.

Also, do you really think it's good for people to come to these kinds of unjustified conclusions, and convict people for things for which there is in fact no evidence?

> It must have been tested. If it weren't KCl, then why would there be no prosecution?

The KCl story sounds so weird to me that it’s hard to reason about. Why would the spouse of someone with a serious medical condition be medicating their husband without his or his doctor’s knowledge?

It also doesn’t explain the elevated vitamin D. So you’d have to conclude the investigation with two unsolved mysteries so to speak.

Yes, and that is presumably a crime in itself, even though it isn't the 'big' crime of poisoning somebody.

My guess is that the wife poisoned him with vitamin D and then started dosing with KCl for some reason, then the KCl dosing was discovered, and we still can't be sure she did the vitamin D dosing. Of course, she probably did. It's very plausible, since the behaviour is so similar to the poisoning behaviour, but we don't have actual evidence of her poisoning him with vitamin D. We have evidence of some lesser, similar crime.

The article says that the doctors found high concentrations of Vitamin D in the water bottle he brought in. The video in which she apparently doses this bottle is dated July 23, 2021. According to the article, she was arrested later that same evening. So not a lot of time for her to change strategies from Vitamin D to KCl. Either the bottle contained Vitamin D, the author is incorrect, or else the police seized the wrong bottle.

Ah.

Then, if there is a decision not to prosecute, that decision would be exceedingly strange. But surely that can't be the case, it would be too stupid.

I think the pivotal point is not what was being put into the water but the fact that it was sneaked in. That is, it was not an act done openly and innocently, but done with subterfuge and intent to deceive. The person doing this knew it was wrong.

People in this thread keep talking about "reasonable doubt", which is the standard of proof in the US criminal justice system (vs "preponderence of the evidence" in the civil system), but that standard only applies to a conviction, *not* to the decision by the prosecutor to bring charges.

Assuming we take the OP's story at face value (obviously something you wouldn't do in a courtroom!), surely there's enough evidence here for a case, even if the defendant isn't, at the end of the day, convicted? Or is Sweden more averse to questionable cases than the US? At least according to this thesis [1], the difference in conviction rate between Sweden and the US doesn't seem to be large enough to support that idea.

[1] https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4835&context...

> Or is Sweden more averse to questionable cases than the US?

Formally I think it is. A Swedish public prosecutor should not prosecute unless they “can look forward to a conviction”. So formally, they should not try a case where they are not relatively confident that the court will convict.

Also, Sweden doesn’t have a jury system. There are “amateur judges” (“nämndemän”). In the first court (“tingsrätten”) the case is typically heard by one magistrate and two “amateur judges”. But on appeal it’s typically three magistrates and two “amateur judges”. Finally, the court has to explain its reasoning in a written verdict. In combination this makes it harder to get convictions in complicated cases with circumstantial evidence.

That sounds very similar to the German system (I'm a US-born German permanent resident, hence familiarity with both systems).

I'd be curious to see some kind of sociological studies about risk aversion amongst criminal prosecutors. Clearly an acquittal (and the associated trial) is still a huge burden to a person, so a strong motivation to only take cases you're confident you'll win makes sense to me. But especially in situations where the circumstantial evidence is so strong, I think most people in the US would consider it unjust not to pursue a trial at all.

To be completely honest, the first thing that crosses my mind is that the prosecutor might be a racist, since the story is (it seems) about an immigrant family. To be clear: I have absolutely no reason to suspect that. But something about the situation sounds off to me, and that's definitely one of the first questions that start lurking in the back of my mind.

Long story long: the optics here definitely aren't good.

> To be completely honest, the first thing that crosses my mind is that the prosecutor might be a racist, since the story is (it seems) about an immigrant family.

My mind too. But maybe only half: The names are only mentioned once or twice, but the author's name seems to be Tang, which sounds definitely foreign in a Swedish context. The wife's name, Kim, may not be very common in Sweden, but definitely not unheard of, so she could well be native.

So perhaps only a half-immigrant family. With the victim a foreigner from far away[1] and the not-prosecuted perpetrator a Swede... Which makes it look even more racist.

___

[1]: Maybe this wouldn't have happened to a Dane or Norwegian. And Finns hardly count as immigrants at all.

> Also, private prosecutions for these kinds of things are unheard of, just as they are in the US.

They are uncommon, but not unheard of. For example, the parents of Johan Asplund privately prosecuted a man for his murder [1]. But sure, if you think the only useful outcome is a conviction for attempted murder, then I agree that seems unlikely. In any case the first step should be to appeal the prosecutor's decision to drop the case.

The right to private prosecution in US federal cases was removed following the 1981 Supreme Court decision in Leeke v. Timmerman.

1. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vasternorrland/enskilt-ata...

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