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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

"Why not ask for an investigation"

Lynch mobs have already done all the investigating that needs investigating.

Those grieving Swartz's death have my sympathy. Those fanning their natural anger to vengeance do not.

Cut out the hysterics. She's a political appointee. She serves at the pleasure of the president. And the public is asking for her removal.

Remember when Bush sacked a bunch of US Attorneys for insufficient ideological purity? If not, this might joggle your memory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_con...

My spouse has spent most of the past twenty years as a clinical social worker at hospice agencies. Stints in between include geriatrics, oncology, and Alzheimer's patients. I've spent some time talking about people's reactions to death and disease. It's not the sort of stuff one leaves at the office. That office includes phone calls at 3am on a Thursday to attend a death.

Getting someone fired won't honor Swartz - at least that's my opinion. It won't change the law - and that's a fact.

I remember the Bush era firings. I didn't think they made a positive change in America. I don't think firing Swartz's prosecutor will either. I think we are better served by people who learn from their mistakes.

Other than protest, what might get the attention of the powers that be that such prosecutorial overreaching is unacceptable?

They have no impetus to change until there's enough anger to make them afraid.

Prosecutorial over-reach is a byproduct of the particular structure of our adversarial system and current views on the role of our legal system. This was not one rogue individual, it was the execution of an institutional mindset that has given us the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Pinning all that on one person allows something to be done without causing change.

Getting the appropriate person or people fired in this case is clearly about accountability, not spite / vindictiveness. These people have a lot of power, and that power was abused.

There's nothing that guarantees any of the people involved will learn from their mistakes, but what we do know is that their actions were a terrible injustice. America isn't going to magically become a better place because one person gets fired, but I don't see anybody arguing otherwise. I see people arguing that such a dramatic abuse of power should have consequences, and that is the point.

Reasonable and thoughtful people can disagree about what constitutes abuse. My opinion, though certainly not expert, is that there is nothing unusual about the tactics used in Shwartz's case - they are typical for the agency and prosecutors in general.

This didn't come about overnight. The Feds were sending people to jail for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine based on the argument that two lovers must have shared it with each other twenty years ago - and those people are only out of prison if they're dead.

It's not dramatic. It's ordinary. Prosecutors treat the courtroom the same way some people treat the golf course - as a place to demonstrate their skill.

Looking at Carmen Ortiz's [track record](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz) of cases prosecuting involving corruption and organized crime, seems like this would be hurting one of the "good guys". No doubt she has enemies that must be gloating about the petition

Yeah, because the world is like a Batman comic, right?

When "good guys" screw up, they must take the same responsibility they ask of "bad guys". When "good guys" resort to bully or torture weaker opponents, they are as bad as anyone.

Well my point was simply here is someone with a good reputation. Perhaps it's worth understanding exactly what took place crying for revenge.

I definitely agree with that notion. I think the problem we're facing is that the general public at this time knows most of what was going on. She's had a good reputation to this point. But she finally picked the wrong person to make an example of. Prosecutorial overreach is a funny thing. In that, her career may have been built on it. If the number of previous people we're actually bad people, the same tactics would of been far more accepted. Since this was a clear abuse of her power, even if it's something prosecutors generally get away with. The idea of making an example out of her seems vengeful and almost hypocritical. But it's not without its grounds.

Here's a good article on HuffPo, exactly about the ongoing practice - and its incentives - of prosecutorial overreach:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/the-power-of-the-pr...

The whole system is flawed; it rewards high-profile convictions, instead of justice. Wrong success metrics -> wrong job description -> wrong outcome.

So, I have a lot of sympathy for those grieving Swartz's death AND fanning their natural anger to vengeance. They are not at odds. That's why I signed both petitions, and really hoping to see them coming through.

Of course none of this will get her (nor Steve "Is he suicidal? Let's lock him down; the jail is safe" Heymann) fired, but hopefully it'll spark the debate within Obama's administration about the (appropriate) role of prosecutors in this country.

Yeah, call me optimistic.

As the page notes, some of those cases are also very controversial. Particularly the case of Tarek Mehanna, who was convicted of aiding a terrorist organization for translating some of their documents into English. No evidence was offered that he had assisted with their operations; the criminal offense was letting the rest of us know what they are thinking. (Do you feel safer not knowing? I don't.)

Here's the ACLU page on the Mehanna case:

http://aclum.org/usa_v_mehanna

This case did not result in a suicide; it did, however, feature a sentence of over 17 years.

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