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Comment by sethist | Hacker News Reader

His father's words may be a little too strong, but they're not entirely off-base either.

Yes, they are off base. He deserves leeway due to the untold grief he is enduring, but a statement like that is ridiculous. Thousands of people a day go to jail a day, many of them for breaking unjust laws, and very few of them kill themselves. He was killed by depression/mental illness not by the government. The charges likely exasperated his condition, but without that underlining fragile mental state, he would almost assuredly still be alive today.

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a: In a drive-by shooting, the driver is often charged along with the shooter; even when the driver insists that he didn't know what was going to happen.

b: The defense attorney claimed that he made Stephen Heymann aware of the suicide risk early in the case.

If Heymann was aware of the risk and pushed ahead anyway, is he a contributor in the same sense that the driver of the car is a contributor? Why or why not?

Are you saying one should not sue, or at least weigh heavily, people's mental state prior to launching a lawsuit?

Is that current procedure, run mental evaluations before suing? Lots of people have mental breakdowns before and during trials. The trials proceed so long as people are 'mentally competent' to stand trial.

If something like this were allowed, people would pretty much abuse the system and claim mental anguish, etc. to avoid facing a trial.

Aren't you aware that we already do take into account the mental states of defendants - the mentally challenged, the insane?

In extreme cases, yes. People are put on suicide watches, but the trials proceed. The bar for being considered 'insane' and 'mentally unfit' is very high. You have people who would colloquially be considered 'crazy' go to trial, represent themselves, etc.

But that did not happen here, did it? Does that make Heymann a contributor?

I don't think so. It's a really tenous connection. It's like saying me getting on the freeway contributed to an accident which happens 10 minutes behind me. Sure, maybe if I had not gotten on the freeway that would have caused a different pattern of traffic on the freeway so that the accident would not have happened, but in no way would I be a direct contributor.

Would you change your mind if you were warned that by getting on the freeway there stood a serious above average risk of causing a accident?

In those cases isn't it due to the fact that the defendant is unable to mentally process their crime, trial, or potential punishment?

The fact that the boy is dead is grim proof that he was "unable to mentally process his potential punishment".

No it isn't. If anything it shows that he didn't want to endure his potential punishment. If he didn't understand the potential punishment there would be no need to commit suicide.

Your statement could be misinterpreted to mean that any rational competent defendant would consider the potential punishment worse than death.

I'm positive that you meant that he understood what 35 years in jail and a felony charge meant and was thus not unfit to stand trial under an insanity claim. That's fair.

Yes, and one of the ways we do so is by the defense filing a motion to argue that the defendant is unfit to stand trial for the time being. I haven't followed the motion work in the case, so I don't know if his defense team made any such claim. But it seems to be that quite a few people are trying to have it both ways - on the one hand he was too mentally fragile to be put on trial, on the other he wanted his day in court to argue for the right to download freely and so the plea bargain with the mild sentence (which would have been served in some sort of minimum security facility) was an unconscionable deal with the devil.

That is a good argument for why Heymann would not be a contributor. That is, Heymann has clean hands because the defense failed to make the court aware that Swartz was possibly unfit to stand trial. Thank you.

Regarding your second point, are you suggesting the legal system should go easy on criminals who may be suicidal?

I just think it is foolish to start blaming every entity that could have contributed to his mental state. Hypothetically speaking, if he had recently broken up with someone or was fired from a job would we claim that they killed him? No, they would simply be catalysts that might have contributed to his ultimate decision.

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