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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

> It's nearly impossible to get paid for malicious prosecution by the federal government.

We'll see. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

> See e.g. Douglass Mackey. He posted some misleading memes on Twitter about the election, falsely claiming that people could vote by text, and got arrested and found guilty at trial until eventually the 2nd circuit said that what he did wasn't a crime. Should he be compensated? Should the prosecutor and judge in his case face their own criminal prosecutions?

"falsely claiming" is a pretty big distinction between these cases, yes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglass_Mackey says he got off, in part, because no one provably fell for his trick, not that the behavior was legal.

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I've read the second circuit opinion and saying that it was legal is a fair takeaway. They didn't reach the 1st amendment grounds though because they didn't need to once determining that he didn't conspire as required (technically, they didn't prove he conspired.)

Of course any two cases are going to be different, and the guy posting memes on your side is going to be more sympathetic to you than the guy posting memes that you don't like.

That's part of my point. If you create a criminal statute that applies to OP, someone is going to try applying it in a case like Mackey's. If you don't think it should be applied in Mackey's case, how would you word it to cover just the cases you like and not those you don't?

That doesn't seem so hard. Per this article:

> That meme — which Larry didn’t create or alter...

> Weems admitted in a later interview that he knew at the time of the arrest that Larry’s Facebook post was a pre-existing meme that referred to an actual shooting that took place in a different state, over 500 miles away…

He didn't create it, the meme was accurate, and the cops knew that. Every bit of the conduct they attempted to punish was clearly legal, and they knew it.

The opinion you reference is at https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/OPN/23-7577_opn.pdf.

"cannot alone establish Mackey’s knowing agreement" clearly indicates that things would have been different if they could have established that conduct.

When an appeals court rules on one issue that's enough to decide the case, they often don't rule on the remaining issues.

Anyway I don't see how you'd word a law that only applies to the cases you like and not the ones you don't.

Also, other people will like different cases than you, including the judge and jury in whatever case gets brought based on the statute you're proposing.

> Anyway I don't see how you'd word a law that only applies to the cases you like and not the ones you don't.

Terms like "willful" and "intent" are all over our laws and would work just fine here. Assessing that is why we have juries.

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