"When one former lawyer told prosecutors that Swartz might kill himself, "Their response was, 'Put him in jail. He’ll be safe there.'"
I know this seems heartless and terrible at first glance but it's actually a pretty reasonable response. Prosecutors can't allow themselves to be swayed by emotional pleas like this and how are they to know if it's even true? Are they supposed to be lenient on any defendant whose lawyers say their client is suicidal? Isn't it obvious the end result would be every defendant claiming this?
If anything, this shifts some blame to his lawyers for not taking his threat seriously enough. Somebody who is a danger to themselves is legally supposed to be locked up, typically in a psychiatric hospital. Jail would have been the second best place he could have been. In both he'd have been physically prevented from being able to commit suicide. Even if he would have had to suffer even more emotionally through the ordeal, he'd still be alive today.
A psychiatric hospital would probably have helped, but being in jail does not stop people from committing suicide, and it's silly for you to suggest that it does.
Source: My brother who killed himself while residing in the "second best place" for a suicidal person to be.
To be fair, while psychiatric hospitals are pretty good at preventing suicide, it's not uncommon for them to be ineptly/corruptly run and cause a lot of emotional damage to already fragile people. Not that jail isn't worse, but at least jail doesn't make people who need doctors afraid of doctors.
I'm very sorry for your loss and for not properly qualifying what I said. I didn't consider that a person who has suffered through this very situation might read what I wrote.
Yes many people do commit suicide in jail. But most of those people are not known to their jailers to be suicidal and thus the proper precautions cannot be taken.
If the jailers know an inmate is suicidal (as Aarons would have if his lawyers told them) they are mandated by law to do everything in their power to prevent it. Right down to them being housed nude in a "rubber room" on 24/7 video surveillance.
Of course, it's extremely difficult to stop a truly determined person from committing suicide but the risk level is certainly much lower if that person is in jail and known to be suicidal than if that person is free in society.
> I didn't consider that a person who has suffered through this very situation might read what I wrote.
That's par for the course these days.
> If the jailers know an inmate is suicidal (as Aarons would have if his lawyers told them) they are mandated by law to do everything in their power to prevent it. Right down to them being housed nude in a "rubber room" on 24/7 video surveillance.
I'm so glad to hear they had just the right environment for Aaron waiting to lovingly receive him. If my sarcasm is shining through then my apologies but I have a hard time dealing with all these well intentioned horror scenarios.
Says fucking who? No really. Why do some people think they get to decide what level of inhuman treatment is enough that choosing to end one's own life is the rational choice? If one does not have the right to end their own life, one was never truly free.
The concept of physically restraining someone from committing suicide is completely antithetical to the idea of man being free. You cannot believe in one while advocating for the other.
> The concept of physically restraining someone from committing suicide is completely antithetical to the idea of man being free. You cannot believe in one while advocating for the other.
Suggesting that you put someone in a "rubber room" is a bit ridiculous, but it's normal to put someone that is suicidal under suicide watch. Keep in mind that mental health can be a huge factor in someone being suicidal. In other words, they're not thinking straight, so it's fair to help them during that time.
Having the right to end your life is different than others trying to help you through a challenging time and show you that there are other ways out.
>Keep in mind that mental health can be a huge factor in someone being suicidal. In other words, they're not thinking straight, so it's fair to help them during that time.
Using the mental health angle to deny someone their most basic right is fraught with issues. Mental health is often defined in terms of conforming to the standard behavior under various measures. We define mentally unhealthy as sufficiently deviant behavior and use that as a rationale for restricting that behavior. This is a thinly veiled attempt at forcing conformity under a scientific premise. Unless one can be demonstrated to be out of touch with reality, we have no right to physically intervene with someone exercising their right to self-determination. If you believe this right has caveats, then you simply never believed in it to begin with.
I think you can demonstrate it in obvious cases: "what color is the sky"? "Potato". Barring cases such as these we would err on the side of allowing one to exercise their right to self-determination. Using the nebulous "depressed" definition as a justification is absurd. Sure, do everything you can to convince them that suicide isn't their only option. But ultimately you must accept that it is not your decision nor the state's.
You're arguing from a false dichotomy here, there are a lot more options than the ones that you see, and most of them are arguably a lot better than the ones you put forward.
Yes, there were other alternatives and jail certainly wasn't the best one. My point is simply that it would have been better than what ultimately happened, so given that, it's not so terrible the prosecutor suggested it.
I got what you meant, but what ultimately did happen is not relevant when you're speculating, what should have happened is and the prosecutors suggestion is moronic.
Part of the whole idea of having a justice system is that you do what's best for society. Putting otherwise superbly functioning human beings naked in a rubber room is such a spectacular waste of human potential that I really have a problem just contemplating such things, it is like having my head defiled.
The twin ghosts of Alan Turing and Socrates would disagree with you. Of course you're now going to argue that they were in a different situation, but both were apparently unable to reconcile living with the injustices heaped upon them by society and there is parallel with Aaron there.
At least the way I meant it, there's a difference between "highly functioning" (even "superbly functioning") and "intelligent" or "accomplished"--and in any case, Socrates was sentenced to death and chose to accept his sentence rather than escaping from prison, so there's that.
You completely miss the point of the Socrates reference. I'll be lazy and quote wikipedia at you: "According to Xenophon's story, Socrates purposefully gave a defiant defense to the jury because "he believed he would be better off dead". Xenophon goes on to describe a defense by Socrates that explains the rigors of old age, and how Socrates would be glad to circumvent them by being sentenced to death. It is also understood that Socrates also wished to die because he "actually believed the right time had come for him to die."
Even ignoring the sentencing of Socrates, Socrates refusing Crito's offer seems to me a clear cut case of suicide. He is offered a chance to avoid his murder and turns it down, in essence making the decision that his life will come to an end.
Now, Socrates of course offers a rational defence for his refusal to save himself so if we accept the refusal as an act of suicide we also accept that suicide can, at least in some circumstances, be the product of a rational train of thought.
Plato's accounts of Socrates offer us a superb platform on which to reason about this sort of thing. Helps to filter out a lot of the modern victim-blaming cruft that has built up over the past few centuries.
You don't think Socrates' response to Crito was rational?
I mean, I don't agree with it, I think his values are misplaced, but I'd still say it is rational. As rational as any human reasoning could be, and really that is the only sort of 'rational' that is relevant. His argument was not the confused ravings of a mentally ill man.
There are many kinds of rational thinking, human and otherwise. And I find his arguments entirely unconvincing no matter what assumptions I put in his thinking. The difference Socrates claims is important - the difference between people's opinion of justice/injustice against him versus the "truth" does not exist in ancient Athens democratic period, after all trials were decided by majority vote.
So "people's" opinion of him and the idea of something being just or unjust - are the exact same thing according to the law of the Athenian state. The same goes for the contract. He does not disagree with Crito's argument that people would find it reasonable for him to flee given the chance - which makes it right under Athens' law. In the end, it is the law as interpreted by the court that determines what is lawful and/or right.
I think the rest of his argument does not make sense in this light. I do not see any indication that it made sense to him. Given his argument, and the attitudes of other Greek stories from that period - I would say that he simply wanted to die, wanted out, because people rejected him - not because he would be violating some ideal. Moving away was not an option since it would mean admitting defeat, it would mean saying he was wrong. There's more stories from that period involving suicide for social reasons or rejection.
I remember thinking like Socrates did when I was a child - that rules presented some absolute "background" standard of behavior that nobody could physically ever violate. Life taught me that I was simply misreading the situation, nothing more. I understand now that I remained stuck "believing" in this absolute law because it enormously simplified the world I had to deal with. I was perfectly aware it did not work, but I had to get into bad situations to get shocked enough to see reality for what it was.
I'm not sure what point you're making regarding exceptions. But I don't believe those exceptions are enough. Being able to remove someone's right because you don't like how they choose to exercise it is no right at all. Either you believe in a right or you don't.
Preventing him from killing himself, by any means necessary, would have been best for society.
If he were in a psychiatric hospital the treatment wouldn't have been much different. They also use rubber rooms and cameras, if necessary.
Outside of those two options, I'm not sure what you are implying could/should have been done. Was the prosecutor supposed to follow Aaron around 24/7 and physically stop him from hurting himself?
> Was the prosecutor supposed to follow Aaron around 24/7 and physically stop him from hurting himself?
I think the prosecution was simply supposed to not charge him at all because despite the fact that aaronsw's actions would have led to any other random computer geek being arrested with nary a second thought on HN, this computer geek is more deserving. After all, he's just trying to "do the right thing".
Hell, in fact the prosecutor should be ashamed of daring bring any charge against someone who only went out of his way to visit some other campus than his own, evade a 1-file-at-a-time control, evade an IP ban, evade a MAC ban, evade a Wifi ban, and hide his face while trespassing in an unlocked server room, where the only reason he even got caught at all was because he simply wouldn't give up. Next thing you know they'll probably start ticketing jaywalkers.
Finally, someone who realizes he wasn't some magical saint who was murdered in a back alley. Any suicide is a tragedy, but it's ultimately no one's fault but Aaron's.
The blame for the suicide ultimately cannot be laid anywhere but on Aaron's shoulders. But that does not mean that everything else is hunky dory. I would have (and DID) objected to the prosecutor's overzealous prosecution of this case even if Aaron had not died. Nor is it fully the fault of a single prosecutor who was using the same techniques used routinely. Perhaps a change to the system is needed.
More simply: the ultimate fault may be (is) Aaron's, but that does not mean that it is "no one's fault but Aaron's" -- there is blame enough to go round.
... Yes it is. If I think these charges probably aren't going to do anything good, and they could kill someone, I might consider not pursuing them (being reasonable)... Easy to say this in hindsight, but it is not unrelated.
"If the jailers know an inmate is suicidal (as Aarons would have if his lawyers told them) they are mandated by law to do everything in their power to prevent it."
There are a lot of wonderful resources about the American prison system that you should explore. You could check out prisoners legal services to start and see the ongoing case histories they are dealing with to get a partial view of what life is like in prison in America.
Unless he is specifically on suicide watch, suicides in jail do happen.
Also, and more importantly, even if they did send him for a 72-hour hold, it is quite possible that they wouldn't hold him for the full 72 hours, or ONLY 72 hours, and then release him.
The maximum sentence for a crime is defined by statute, rather than being some special threat by prosecutors. For wire fraud it's 20 years, even if your fraudulent scheme was designed to enrich you by only $1. Sentencing is determined by the court after conviction; it's unlikely that he would have been sentenced to more than a couple of years.
This thing of focusing on the maximum possible sentence is a bad habit inculcated by the media. It's more instructive to look at the median sentence for this kind of crime.
You forget the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. His level, minus enhancements, based on $5 million fraud, (according to the indictment) yields a sentence of 57-71 months plus 2-3 years of supervised release (no computers) plus a fine. That's a good deal more than, "a couple of years."
That's what you get for having elected prosecutors. But quoting the statutory maximum as a matter of fact for a soundbite and asking the court to impose it (which it seems they were not about to do) are very different.
That's true, but they are political appointees and most have been have pursued the path of running for DA or attorney-general in state and local elections. Sorry for the confusion, I suppose I should have said that the trouble was that the office of prosecutor is political (as opposed to professional) in the US.
It is expressly not (supposed to be) political, but how you interpret that is up to you. See: Monica Goodling, Tim Griffin, et al. As far as aspirants to elected office goes, Giuliani is a rarity among federal prosecutors more than he's an exemplar, most are lawyerly lifers. It's like saying kernel hackers are secretly pining to become marketing executives.
If my lawyer told me that the threat was garbage and that I'd be able to get a plea bargain somewhere between a few months and nothing at all for something I did purely out of civil disobedience, I wouldn't exactly kill myself.
All I can say is that some people aren't cut out for prison, and there was no indication that "nothing at all" was a possible outcome, save one's faith in the jury system.
However, my point was to note the contradiction in you saying that prosecutors can't be swayed by emotion, while they conduct themselves so as to sway their targets with same. If you don't think that the threat of a long prison sentence would spur emotion in the person receiving the threat, well, I don't know what to say.
>Somebody who is a danger to themselves is legally supposed to be locked up, typically in a psychiatric hospital. Jail would have been the second best place he could have been.
He wasn't exactly the reckless insane type. Some people prefer death than jail, and it seems reasonable if you're able of empathy and really consider what a person goes through in jail. It's a matter personal freedom and it should be respected, otherwise one might be implying death was too good for him.
I wonder whether or not his defense lawyers filed any motions about Swartz's fitness to stand trial. If they really thought he was suicidal, that would be part of their job and it happens all the time.
To put forth that argument, would Swartz have needed to make himself subject to involuntary commitment? Could that have created more problems for him than it would have solved? He gets locked up, even before trial, and it could all be for nothing.
I really don't know. But if his lawyers were discussing his mental fragiility with prosecutors, it seems to me that they would have had a duty to their client to bring such a possibility to the court's attention. If you really think your client is suicidal, treating his her mental state as a bargaining chip in negotiation without trying to put the trial on hold sounds ethically dubious.
> Are they supposed to be lenient on any defendant whose lawyers say their client is suicidal? Isn't it obvious the end result would be every defendant claiming this?
It depends what you are trying to do: punish defendant for his crimes, or give an example for the public. Of course the (mental) health of defendant should be taken under consideration when sentencing.
This wasn't sentencing it was prosecution and I disagree that the mental health of the defendant should be taken into consideration when the cause of the mental health breakdown was facing the punishment for his crimes. If it led to them committing the crime in the first place, perhaps, such as a schizophrenic assaulting somebody, but that isn't the case here. Aaron got depressed because he was caught and prosecuted. That should not warrant them going easy on him.
There are plenty of valid reasons the prosecutor here should be fired and laws changed, but Aaron's emotional response to being prosecuted is not one of them.
So essentially - since the thought of potential jailtime makes him suicidal let's just actually put him in jail and stop the suicide. Is that what you are implying? In that case I am speechless. Especially when the point of contention in this case was whether or not the prosecution was over zealous in demanding jail time in the first place.
It's not 'since the thought of...' it's just that 'since he is suicidal'. The fact that he was suicidal because of the thought of going to jail is irrelevant to the prosecutor, as it must be. They can't allow such emotional responses to weigh on their decision making or they wont be able to effectively do their job and they'll open themselves up to deceptive manipulation.
I don't think it's reasonable for any of us to sit in front of our computers and say that his choices/decisions were reasonable or unreasonable. He was depressed and facing a 50 yr sentence and most of us don't know how that feels.
He had options. He could have got a plea bargin and stayed in jail for 4 months and pleaded guilty. Of course, nobody knows how this would have turned out until the prosecution plays it out in court, it could have been drastically less or more since it was a crime without physically harmed victims akin to violent crimes. He had influence, he could have still fought the fight like he always did and used his story to make clear the inefficiency and injustice served to him by the system that convicted him. This would have boosted his credibility up much more than where he's at now because he went through jail for his cause.
My point is, there were many options, we don't consider all of them. He didn't need to become a martyr. As great as he appears to be dead, he would have been much greater alive.
On the contrary, prosecutors should allow themselves to be influenced by emotional pleas. I think your social responsibility to respond to these emotional signals increases as you have more power over others, not the other way around like you seem to suggest...
I know this seems heartless and terrible at first glance but it's actually a pretty reasonable response. Prosecutors can't allow themselves to be swayed by emotional pleas like this and how are they to know if it's even true? Are they supposed to be lenient on any defendant whose lawyers say their client is suicidal? Isn't it obvious the end result would be every defendant claiming this?
If anything, this shifts some blame to his lawyers for not taking his threat seriously enough. Somebody who is a danger to themselves is legally supposed to be locked up, typically in a psychiatric hospital. Jail would have been the second best place he could have been. In both he'd have been physically prevented from being able to commit suicide. Even if he would have had to suffer even more emotionally through the ordeal, he'd still be alive today.