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Comment by palmotea | Hacker News Reader

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People can be predisposed towards something, and then have a tipping point brought by periods of great stress

Jason Arday recently committed suicide due to media pressure, and even when the media was told that he was not mentally well and should please back off, they didn't.

The man was accused of plagiarism, and there was no final verdict on if he did. The institutions that hired him clearly had no issues in vetting him. And yet he committed suicide.

There are absolutely horrible people out there right now who's entire careers are shams, and don't even come close to thinking about it. People are built different, and have different triggers

> The man was accused of plagiarism, and there was no final verdict on if he did.

Bullshit. It wasn't the first round of plagiarism, or redactions. His whole supposed life story was a fraud. He passed off other researchers' patient interviews as his own.

> accused of plagiarism

Weird way to spell "lied about nearly every facet of his life and anyone who questioned it was aggressively accused of being racist."

Sure. That he was facing 35 years in prison for his “crimes“ had nothing to with his suicide.

Please educate yourself about how the US criminal justice system actually works, especially around plea deals. Also especially around sentencing for white collar crimes in terms of what white collar criminals are actually sentenced to, and what is typically taken into consideration by judges during sentencing phases (like, say, mental health issues.)

Please also educate yourself about how federal prosecutors treated Schwartz after he scraped PACER.

Please also educate yourself about how long prosecutors attempted to negotiate a plea deal with Schwartz, what their final offer was, what his family, friends, his girlfriend, and his team of top-shelf, famous lawyers advised him to do, and what he actually did.

US criminal justice system has justice only on its name and that's it. I am always amazed how individuals defend these joke you call a system. Amazing.

Please educate YOURSELF about criminal actions by a company is a fine (read: cost of doing business), whereas criminal actions by a person get years/decades long prison time and life-long ramifications after the actual punishment.

And PACER is federal court documents. Its a fucking scam and travesty that a system soo heavily built on precedent gatekeeps its own law at $.10/page.

Aaron is a motherfucking hero.

If only you were able to take your perspective one step farther. Why did he commit suicide?

> If only you were able to take your perspective one step farther. Why did he commit suicide?

If I get dumped and I commit suicide because of it, does that mean I was "executed by proxy" by my girlfriend/boyfriend?

"Executed by proxy" is ridiculous, overheated rhetoric.

Because something was wrong in his brain and he couldn't handle the stress of his situation.

Many people have faced similar or worse charges, and did not commit suicide, so we'll have to point at something else.

Fuck them for what they did to him, but we should be rallying to get him set free. We can't start pointing fingers at other people for suicides. We have agency.

Why did he commit suicide?

"We are going to jail you for half or more of your life, restrict any medicines you might be on, treat you in deplorable conditions, constitute you as a slave of the state if we decide so". And there is no parole in federal prisons.

Feds did NOT have to choose to go the route they did. Their pursuance of a victimless "crime" lead to Aaron's only path was 'Exit'.

Sure, he committed suicide. Why? Because his life was already significantly threatened with what amounts to torture by prison.

JSTOR didn't want the criminal charges

But Carmen Ortiz did.

The feds are not JSTOR now are they? Your discourse is disgusting and only weakens the cause.

I started typing out something but they're foaming at the mouth and wildly ignorant about nearly everything ranging from the basics of how the US criminal trial system works, PACER fee policies, the fact that prosecutors spent a year negotiating with Schwartz over a plea deal with a final offer of 6 months...a deal he refused against the advice of friends, family, his partner,

Any time someone starts shrieking "half his life" you can assume they don't know a single factual thing about the case.

From the tone, ignorance, drama, and attitude I'm guessing they're about 22 years old.

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