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Comment by tiredofcareer | Hacker News Reader

I'm not trolling.

Why does this girl deserve attention? Why did she get it? I genuinely can't come up with a reason.

Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons? Because this is absolutely not out of ordinary, and I've personally seen a 12-year-old expelled and nearly charged with a crime because his mother packed him a steak knife without realizing the school's zero-tolerance policy.

I wish this girl the best and she deserves a fair trial, but sometimes I wonder if society's tack of showering money on people's legal fund merely because they made news puts incentives in the right places...

If you down vote, can you explain why? I'd like to have an objective conversation about this without drive-by downvotes to shut me up.

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Curiosity is not a crime.

Court is a resource war. The true cost of a legal defence can easily get into the $100k range

I donated to make sure that their was a fair trial, or else we will have someone pleading to a felony early for a school science experiment.

> Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons?

Yes, if I am aware of it & can afford it.

I'm not sure where you pulled that number from. I've successfully defended against multiple charges in my life, unsuccessfully others, and the only money I was out was a couple forms and bail, which I got back. The charges I got out of involved a public defender. When I hired a lawyer, I was convicted.

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the criminal system from people that have never been through it and, by the very nature of how the criminal system works -- especially if you end up in front of a jury -- it's impossible to predict how anything will play out.

I'm more concerned that people are donating to a legal fund after reading news statements and, possibly, the police report.

> I'm not sure where you pulled that number from.

I have never been convicted. I have been through 5 court cases in my life time, including reaching the Supreme Court both as a plaintiff and as a defendant. I am 26.

So one's civil -- a completely different ballgame -- since you don't reach the Supreme Court as a plaintiff for a criminal case. Is the other civil or criminal?

Are you saying that your appeals to SCOTUS were heard both times or that they were merely considered and later rejected?

>>> Why does this girl deserve attention?

Because injustice is being done to her and we know about it.

>>> Why did she get it?

No idea. Luck?

>>> Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons?

Not all of them. But probably some of them.

>>> she deserves a fair trial

Actually she doesn't deserve any trial. What she deserves is a talk with her science teacher about how to conduct experiments safely and maybe two-day suspension for scaring the crap out of couple of adults and wasting police's time. And a subscription to a couple of science magazines from her parents.

And you have all the facts, then?

We have enough to conclude that with a high degree of confidence, yes.

I don't know "all the facts". No any person does. I know enough to make my conclusions. You want to challenge them? Be my guest, but do bring your facts and arguments with you.

At least some of the facts, as noted above: http://www.scribd.com/doc/138927259/Wilmot-Arrest

The report is sketchy, which is good: not a lot if contamination, and no one's had much time to get their 'story straight' yet.

My impression is that see knew something was going to happen, but did not think it through. (If it smokes in a closed bottle... Where'd that pressure go?) that at least jives with the testimony, but there's no evidence for criminal intent there, so more testimony is needed to confirm her character.

>Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons?

Hell yes. We should get involved. Every. Single. Time. This stuff thrives on people just shrugging their shoulders and moving on, reminding themselves to keep their heads extra down. If we made a stink every time, there wouldn't have to be many times.

When you donate, or even just take the time to get involved, think of it as raising your own taxes just a smidge to actually make the system better.

I don't think of it that way. I think of it as giving money to someone I don't know, so that person can forward (with my trust) it on to someone else who didn't ask for it and potentially doesn't need it (what if her family are billionaires?), to defend against charges that I don't have the full story on (and it's part of my DNA to wait for the facts, sorry if you guys are a little more hasty), for a person I'll never meet and who will be fine from this either way.

Making the system better isn't a legal fund for a kid. Making the system better is a legal fund for anybody that ends up in this situation. That's my point, but apparently I'm not allowed to share it since I wasn't educated in private school[1]. I'm not fiscally conservative, but donating to someone's legal defense personally doesn't sit right with me in the general, even more so if the only reason most people are doing so is because the news made them aware of it and dictated the story that you heard.

I think to a lesser extent there's a little bit of overcompensation going on here since it was revealed posthumously that Aaron Swartz needed money for his legal defense but couldn't ask for it. A Cmd+F of his name around this thread should provide that evidence.

All I ever advocate for is caution. If you see a news story and go "wow, that sucks, I'm going to give her some money," the news media successfully manipulated you. I used to work in print; there are Hollywoodesque people that will send press releases to news organizations on behalf of families in this situation, with promises of tearjerking interviews. I'm serious. I'm just advocating for caution, and in the more broad the trend of Internet lynch mobbing and culting that potentially cost a missing Brown student his life recently. The Internet is graduating into a much more powerful force, particularly here on Hacker News and other sites like Reddit, and I worry about the long-term consequences of acting without full facts of a situation.

I'm really tired of this thread.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5653912

> and who will be fine from this either way.

She's already been removed from school. That's significantly disruptive to her.

She faces criminal prosecution. That's significantly disruptive.

If convicted, as an adult, she'll have a criminal record. Of federal crimes.

I'm baffled how you can say that she'll be fine from this.

> That's my point,

Well, this is the first post you've said that, so you're not doing such a great job of making it. Instead of your strong positive point[1] you've attacked this girl, and the people who feel sorry for her and who want to try to help her.

Of course you're going to face opposition for your views if you go about it like that.

[1]Injustice is widespread. We've heard about this girl, but there are many other children facing similar injustices. It's great that she's being offered help, but we need to work as a society to temper our reactions to youthful indiscretions. Getting the police involved in stuff that can be dealt with by school is wrong, and we need to try to stop it happening."

I'm really tired of this thread.

Have you tried not reading it? When I don't like doing something, I find that the symptoms vanish when I stop doing it.

I'm far from a legal expert, but here's why I'd do it:

I don't like to see this kind of abuse by people like the school administrators, etc. If this case is well-funded and successful, it might become precedent for many others, and thus weaken the whole concept of "zero-tolerance" by providing a relevant case for future victims to use in their defense. If she loses, then the opposite will be the case (there will be precedent for draconian punishment) and it'll grease the skids for future convictions.

That's my (possibly ill-informed) reason, I'd be interested to hear if other people here think it is valid or not.

It's ridiculous to suggest that we should do nothing about an injustice that comes to our attention just because it's not the only injustice in the world, and we're not going to do anything about most of them (not least because we don't know about them). Some injustices we care more about than others, and we need not justify ourselves to you.

That said, if you see a news story about a 12-year-old expelled because his mother packed him a steak knife, feel free to submit it. I can't promise it will be upvoted onto the front page, but it's worth a try. I will probably read it if I notice it.

Not to justify myself, but to satisfy your curiosity, I will attempt to answer your question. This girl's situation attracts attention here on HN, I surmise, because her intent was scientific in nature. Okay, it's a teenager's science experiment, but still, she was exploring the physical world. This is something that a lot of people here can relate to.

It's ridiculous to suggest that I'm implying we should do nothing now that we're aware of it, since I damn near typed verbatim "why are we aware of this?" as the thesis point of my comment. Reactions to my comment are all over the place, this has been a net karma sink for sharing an unpopular opinion, and there's someone mocking my education for sharing it. So much for civil discourse, and congratulations on being on the "right" side of this opinion, I guess (as disappointing as it is that there is a "right" side).

The campaign is currently at $1332. That hardly counts as "showering money" upon someone who is facing two felony charges and needing legal representation.

This girl does not deserve a fair trial. She deserves an apology.

The responsible staff at the state attorney's office deserve to be laughed out of office.

And you reached that conclusion based on what evidence? Good thing we don't need evidence to determine guilt in a court of law, since it sounds like you've got the findings figured out already based on what you've read in the news and in statements.

I'm not saying anybody is lying. There is just usually more to these stories.

Based on the police report and media interviews with the school officials.

Even if you assume she did everything in the most damning interpretation of all accounts, she is guilty of enclosing toilet bowl cleaner and bits of aluminum foil in a small plastic bottle and observing that the slowly released gases cause the bottle to rupture.

The facts, as best as any of us can tell, are that no one was hurt and no property was damaged. That alone is enough for me to conclude that the penalty is WAY out of line with the "crime", and that this girl deserves our support.

Now if all the various media reports are actually wrong, and somebody was injured, then fine... somebody shows me some evidence of that, I'll accept that she deserves a harsher punishment. But if that had happened, I find it very hard to believe that it wouldn't have been widely reported already.

> I've personally seen a 12-year-old expelled and nearly charged with a crime

If you actually mean to compare "nearly charged with a crime" with "charged with two felonies," I don't see how we can have a productive conversation, because that is just too bizarre to wrap my head around.

Then it's good that I didn't mean to compare them, and instead illustrate that overreaction is common.

There are grave injustices every day in this country (or any country, really). It's impossible to give everything the attention it deserves without solving systemic issues. However, that doesn't mean people should ignore any one particular event because other bad events happen in the world too.

If you notice, I never advocated for ignoring it. I wondered why we're aware of it in the first place.

> If you down vote, can you explain why?

I always downvote comments that contain complaints or predictions about potential downvotes. Your opinions should stand on their own merits, and let the upvotes or downvotes come as they will.

What a great blanket policy, regardless of the rest of the comment. On the accounts I've had downvote privileges with, I've reserved them for cases where the comment doesn't contribute anything or is disruptive to the discussion; no wonder I get downvoted a lot, there must be a lot of people misusing downvoting as you are. And yes, I'm aware of the guideline. That you've turned a guideline into a blanket downvote-all is pretty depressing, particularly since I didn't complain or invite, as the guidelines specifically say.

I made a request since I've left comments before that have hit the toilet bowl rather quickly, merely because I went against the grain of this sort of feel-good philanthropy. There was no other reason to downvote those prior comments other than disagreeing, which I think is misuse of downvoting. I've already accrued more downvotes on the comment than there are followup comments, so people are ignoring the request anyway, and probably not even making it that far in the comment before clicking the button.

I wish pg would implement a feature where a downvote costs you a karma point. That would be great. Between refreshes I can watch every comment I've left in this thread lose another point, because someone comes through and blanket downvotes everything I've said. Which, obviously, I interpret as trying to shut up (now that graying has been implemented) an opinion that people find unreasonable, rather than letting their own opinion stand on its own merit, as you say, as a reply to mine.

According to pg, it has always been OK to down vote comments you disagree with:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

> I've already accrued more downvotes on the comment than there are followup comments, so people are ignoring the request anyway, and probably not even making it that far in the comment before clicking the button.

You can make whatever requests you like, but people are not obligated to accede to them, and I'm letting you know that such requests are generally counterproductive.

I had an account when pg left that comment. That was five years ago, long before grayed-out comments were even implemented. Now, if enough people disagree with a comment, it turns gray and is never seen again. Which means the only comments that will survive now are the ones that everybody considers agreeable enough to upvote or leave alone.

There's a word for that. Several, actually. Because of that, I now think that pg is even more wrong than he was at the time.

>>> the only comments that will survive now are the ones that everybody considers agreeable enough to upvote or leave alone

That's obviously not true, in "everybody" part. True statement would be "the only comments that will survive now are the ones that are not disagreeable to substantially more people than agree with them". I.e., comment that 51% like and 49% hate would still have positive points.

I have no idea what you just said to me, but it sounded like you were nitpicking my point.

No, I was disagreeing with your point that on HN you need to agree with everybody. Since there are both upvotes and downvotes, only prevalence of downvotes leads to a negative rating, not any disagreement.

I didn't make that point.

I downvoted one post. I'm not blanket downvoting everything you say. That is an odd accusation.

EDIT: the accusation in the parent seems to have been removed without comment.

I guess the same reason that everyone gave Aaron so much attention.

Over-reactions from political chest thumping ruins lives and damages society. The general public needs to understand that concept. The best way to communicate that to the primitive ape like creatures milling about on our rock in space is to tell them a personal story.

Basically, it's public manipulation, with blessing because it's manipulating the public in the right direction.

This:

http://www.atlassociety.org/sites/default/files/Unrugged_Ind...

"... benevolence is a commitment to engage with others, to participate in society, in order to achieve the values derivable from other human beings. This commitment is based on the belief that one’s interests are not in conflict with those of others, but in basic harmony. It involves the expectation that one will be able to like, respect, enjoy the company of, or at least profit economically from exchanges with, most of the people around one—that they will make a positive contribution to one’s life."

God this is what private school is for.

Come again? Can you elaborate on what you mean?

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