Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

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Several comments have talked about 35 year or longer potential sentences.

Those big numbers come from simply taking the maximum possible sentence that can ever be given out for each charge, and adding them all up.

There are two things that make that unrealistic in most cases. First, the defendant is almost always charged with several similar or related crimes that have mostly the same elements. If convicted on more than one charge from such a group, they are only sentenced for one of the convictions.

Second, the sentence takes into account the severity of the particular acts that constitute the crime, and the prior criminal record of the defendant. To get the maximum possible sentence you'd need to have gone way beyond what ordinary violators of that particular law usually do, and you'd have to have a serious criminal history.

What Swartz was actually facing if he want to trial and was convicted was something ranging from probation to a few years, depending on just how much damage the court decided he caused.

If he took the plea the prosecutor was offering, he was facing up to 6 months.

Details with citations on the above are available at [1] and [2].

In the dozens of discussions of the Swartz case we've had in the last year here, the 35 year or 50 year myth has been repeatedly busted. Yet it keeps coming up in each new discussion--often from people who were in some of the previous discussions! Why is it so persistent?

[1] http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/

[2] http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...

Because you are wrong. It doesn't matter whether the chance to get such a high sentence was a realistic one, it is about the fact that there was a time when Aaron was facing such a long time in prison, that he couldn't know for sure it would not happen. From the article:

Aaron was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, and “unlawfully obtaining information from” and “recklessly damaging” a “protected computer.” There would be 13 felony counts in all. At the time of the indictment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said he could face 35 years in prison.

It was not just unrealistic. It was pretty much flat out impossible.

For a given charge, the law specifies a range of possible sentences. The particular sentence is determined largely algorithmically, with one of the inputs being the defendant's prior convictions. Another input in how much damage was done.

With no prior convictions in this area, even if the court found that Swartz had caused the maximum alleged damage he would not have been able to get anything remotely near the maximum. If the judge had for some reason ignored the rules from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and imposed a longer sentence, it would have been easily overturned on appeal.

Second, there is a kind of redundancy in the charges. Congress sometimes passes several laws that all cover essentially the same kind of wrongful act. A defendant can be charged under all of them, but is only sentenced under one of them even if convicted for all.

The 35 year number comes from a press release. The press release authors just take the highest number in the range for each charge, and add them all up. They do not take into account the grouping of similar charges for sentencing, nor do they take into account any factors (such as lack of prior criminal record) that lower the maximum for the particular defendant whose indictment they are writing about.

Read Orin Kerr's analysis. It is thorough, and fully documented.

Please stop belittling Aaron's intelligence. I know many people on HN feel like they have to defend Aaron's life and want to find someone to blame but he's not an idiot. He knew as well as anyone that actual jailtime would be very minimal. He had lawyers and a brain (a smart one).

So claiming that he killed himself over a number that wasn't even a possibility is damaging to his image. To me it seems like a bright man got caught doing something illegal and couldn't face the music.

It is highly questionable to claim to know for sure how long the jailtime would have been. It is not like the USA isn't known for overly hard punishments.

Besides, I still think that such a possible outcome can be a hard burden, even with the knowledge that it is unlikely.

> To me it seems like a bright man got caught doing something illegal and couldn't face the music.

"Face the music"? we are not talking about a game here, but about jail and a real life. Besides, that comment totally ignores how far the prosecution stretched the law to define the illegality of his actions.

edit: I never claimed he killed himself over the number.

Humans love stories that lend credence to their own side, even if they aren't true, even if they know they aren't true. I've found myself doing it when I look back at things I wrote years or even months in the past.

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