An anarchist has been sentenced to a year in jail for having links to explosives information on his Web site. AmeriKKKa is further fucking the First Amendment by restricting whom he may associate with in the future, and what views he may espouse. As is usual in most criminal cases today, the defendent was forced to plea bargain to avoid the threat of worse charges if he went to trial. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/05/anarchist.prison.ap/index.html ----- LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A federal judge sentenced a man to a year in prison Monday for creating an anarchist Web site with links to sites on how to build bombs. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson sentenced Sherman Austin to more than the prosecutor had recommended under a plea bargain. Austin, 20, pleaded guilty in February to distributing information related to explosives. ... -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Eric Cordian wrote:
An anarchist has been sentenced to a year in jail for having links to explosives information on his Web site. AmeriKKKa is further fucking the First Amendment by restricting whom he may associate with in the future, and what views he may espouse.
You can't protect people from cowardice. Jim Bell plead the first time. Michael Milkin plead. Bill Gates plead. Various Arabs plead recently. If you plead you can't be acquitted unless you can convince a judge to let you withdraw your plea tough. Courage. Prosecutors and cops are allowed to lie to you about their intent. Know the law. http://technoptimist.blogspot.com/2003_08_03_technoptimist_archive.html#1060... DCF
On Tuesday, August 5, 2003, at 05:31 PM, Duncan Frissell wrote:
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Eric Cordian wrote:
An anarchist has been sentenced to a year in jail for having links to explosives information on his Web site. AmeriKKKa is further fucking the First Amendment by restricting whom he may associate with in the future, and what views he may espouse.
You can't protect people from cowardice. Jim Bell plead the first time. Michael Milkin plead. Bill Gates plead. Various Arabs plead recently. If you plead you can't be acquitted unless you can convince a judge to let you withdraw your plea tough. Courage.
Prosecutors and cops are allowed to lie to you about their intent. Know the law.
http://technoptimist.blogspot.com/ 2003_08_03_technoptimist_archive.html#106012921668886203
Sadly, pleading is often the only viable choice. When the cops are liars, when the judges are ignoring the Constitution, when the appeals courts are too busy to hear appeals for many years (unless the appeal is an emergency appeal to halt the recall of Gray Davis, that is), and when sentencing guidelines are fully out of whack with economics and even with that nebulous concept of "justice," pleading is often the best of a bad deal. This is all possible because the plea bargaining system has gotten out of control. The accused face a plea deal of M months and N dollars if they plead, or 10M months and 20N dollars if they go to trial and lose, which is pretty likely when cops lie, when judges ignore the Constitution, and when juries are made up of people who are uncontroversial enough so as to have no opinions to disqualify them. (I was last picked for a jury 30 years ago this summer, back when I registered as a Republican. In the 30 years since, when I have been registered as a Libertarian, I have never been selected for a jury. Meanwhile, some of my know-nothing neighbors tell me about serving every few years on juries.) In a couple of criminal cases I have first-hand knowledge of, the plea deals were made so persuasive and the sentencing guidelines so harsh (had it gone to trial and the accused found guilty) that to not plea would have been irresponsible. You may not like this, and you may have cheered on the fights by the noble fighters who decided not to plea, but the system is stacked in favor of pleas. This is our injustice system. --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.
At 18:06 2003-08-05 -0700, Tim May wrote: (I was last picked for a jury 30 years ago this summer, back when I
registered as a Republican. In the 30 years since, when I have been registered as a Libertarian, I have never been selected for a jury. Meanwhile, some of my know-nothing neighbors tell me about serving every few years on juries.)
I was also last registered as a Libertarian. Last year I was invited to interview for a Grand Jury seat. Admittedly, this was in Clark County, Nevada a very conservative/libertarian area. steve "The contest is not between Democrats and Republicans, it's between government and the governed." -- anonimo arancio
Duncan Frissell opines:
You can't protect people from cowardice. Jim Bell plead the first time. Michael Milkin plead. Bill Gates plead. Various Arabs plead recently. If you plead you can't be acquitted unless you can convince a judge to let you withdraw your plea tough. Courage.
The problem here is that if you have a family and assets and responsibility and something resembling a future, you cannot afford to be the 1 in 100 who refuses to plea bargain, because the government has the vast amount of money it saved itself not taking the other 99 cases to trial with which to screw you and make an example out of you to anyone else who may stupidly think they can defy the system. Thus, the problem of plea bargains can only be solved by eliminating plea bargaining itself. It cannot be solved by individuals caught in the system demonstrating "courage." It's one of those Prisoner's Dillema-ish situations. The demonstration to the Sheeple that one cannot break the system, one can only break oneself against the system. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
Sherman Austin was arrested in New York but not charged and held in prison there to await an indictment in California. New York said it had no legitimate charges to make against him and merely did a favor for California to nab Sherman during a street demonstration -- the only arrest of the day. Grounds for arrest were faults in Sherman's jalopy he'd driven to NY for the demo. Ordered transferred to California while an attorney tried to arrange his release to a family member, he was shuttled around federal prisons for more days, his family and attorney not sure where he was. He was finally released when a judge determined he was being unfairly punished by prison procedure. He was released at the Oklahoma City federal transfer station, to find his way home on his own, the family had not been told he was being released. Not long after his return to California, the prosecutor announced there would be no prosecution. (During this time some of us mirrored the bomb making material Sherman had on his RaisetheFist.com site -- the forbidden material is still up, see below.) After some weeks the prosecutor reinstated the indictment and initiated plea negotiations. Sherman rejected the initial comparatively mild plea offer. More time passed with not much happening. Then the feds went on the attack again and issued harsher plea demands and threats. This new attack led Sherman's attorney to recommend a bargain. Sherman considered fighting but he was advised what he legal fee would be and the maximum penalty if he lost. He agreed to a four month sentence. The judge upped that to a year. Sherman was eighteen when this shit began. Sherman Austin case files: http://cryptome.org/usa-v-rtf-swa.htm http://cryptome.org/usa-v-sma-aca.htm http://cryptome.org/usa-v-sma-dht.htm http://cryptome.org/usa-v-sma-dkt.htm http://cryptome.org/usa-v-sma-x1a.htm What the FBI Doesn't Want You to See at RaisetheFist.com http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/raisethefist/ The free speech contents of Raisethefist.com: http://cryptome.org/raisethefist.zip
At 06:17 PM 08/05/2003 -0700, Eric Cordian wrote:
The problem here is that if you have a family and assets and responsibility and something resembling a future, you cannot afford to be the 1 in 100 who refuses to plea bargain,
It's a rigged game, and the "20 years extra for terrorism" raises the stakes substantially from the usual "1 year if you plead, or 3-4 years if you fight and lose" deal. (In my case, the plea bargain was "We'll drop the obviously bogus charge if you stipulate that you don't have grounds to sue us", and given how the judge treated the other cops in his court, chickening out and taking it was probably the correct decision.)
It's one of those Prisoner's Dillema-ish situations. The demonstration to the Sheeple that one cannot break the system
No, it's *not* Prisoner's Dilemma. The cops almost never have anything to lose by accepting a shorter sentence, except in highly publicized politically important cases, or by losing an occasional case, and their costs for going to trial are low enough that, while they save money by pleading out most cases, it's basically a minimal cost compared to the accused's costs. (The Prison Guards Union makes a bit less money on it, but it leaves them room to keep some drug user in jail a bit longer, and in any case it's not enough money to turn the game into the classic Prisoner's Dilemma.) Sometimes there's a case like OJ which creates really bad publicity for them if they lose, and sometimes they've got a Johnny Walker Lindh who could give them serious constitutional problems if they have a trial, but all of those are pretty rare, though they _are_ Prisoner's Dilemma cases. Most people they try are either guilty of something, and the real issue is exactly how many counts of what they're guilty of and how much they ought to be punished. Most of the rest of them are the wrong person accused by mistake, in which case if they lose they can be really sorry and announce how glad they are that their mistake was noticed, or they're some quality-of-life crime where dragging the accused through the process and keeping him in jail for a few nights or a few months keeps the sheeple in line even if they lose. (That's especially appropriate for most political-protest cases - you block traffic for the afternoon, they beat you and throw you in jail for the weekend, and maybe keep you in a couple extra days.)
Bill Stewart wrote:
No, it's *not* Prisoner's Dilemma.
Think more literally here. The prisoners are the entire population of accused persons. If all the accused (in all cases in the Injustice System) were to reject plea bargaining and insist on a jury trial, then prosecutors would be spread more thin, and would not be able to extort confessions as they do now.
Most people they try are either guilty of something, and the real issue is exactly how many counts of what they're guilty of and how much they ought to be punished.
Do you have any evidence at all for this assertion? It seems to me that you've been taken in by Big Brother's propaganda. On a regular basis I hear about corrupt judges who act as a second prosecutor, and actively prevent the accused from presenting any effective defense by disallowing crucial evidence and even telling them what arguments they can make. Too often, the prosecution just needs to convict somebody to keep their numbers high, or police need to make arrests because they've allocated a certain portion of the departmental budget to come from forfeitures.
On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 01:17 AM, Bill Stewart wrote:
At 06:17 PM 08/05/2003 -0700, Eric Cordian wrote:
The problem here is that if you have a family and assets and responsibility and something resembling a future, you cannot afford to be the 1 in 100 who refuses to plea bargain,
It's a rigged game, and the "20 years extra for terrorism" raises the stakes substantially from the usual "1 year if you plead, or 3-4 years if you fight and lose" deal.
They're also throwing sentencing enhancements in if guns are found. "Use your Second Amendment rights and get an extra 20 years added to your sentence." (Seems to be a pattern. Using either First or Second Amendment rights triggers a harsh sentence.) The whole U.S. prison system is out of whack, economically. If a local community is responsible for imprisoning a convict, and had to feed and house him, there are some economic constraints that shine through. To wit, my little town of Corralitos isn't going to spend $40,000 a year to imprison a pot smoker. Nor is the larger city of Santa Cruz going to build a SuperMax prison to house a thousand people who have used drugs, talked about bombs, or sent spam mail. But since local communities don't pay for imprisoning their own people, it's a classic game theory situation where costs are delinked from choices. It doesn't cause lawmakers anything to "get tough on crime" by adding "sentencing enhancements." In fact, they get to tell their constituents they have made the streets safer by taking those dangerous First Amendment radicals off the streets.
(In my case, the plea bargain was "We'll drop the obviously bogus charge if you stipulate that you don't have grounds to sue us", and given how the judge treated the other cops in his court, chickening out and taking it was probably the correct decision.)
It's one of those Prisoner's Dillema-ish situations. The demonstration to the Sheeple that one cannot break the system
No, it's *not* Prisoner's Dilemma. The cops almost never have anything to lose by accepting a shorter sentence, except in highly publicized politically important cases, or by losing an occasional case, and their costs for going to trial are low enough that, while they save money by pleading out most cases, it's basically a minimal cost compared to the accused's costs. (The Prison Guards Union makes a bit less money on it, but it leaves them room to keep some drug user in jail a bit longer, and in any case it's not enough money to turn the game into the classic Prisoner's Dilemma.)
I was reading someplace that one of the main lobbying forces for "more laws" are some of the small towns in California, for example, which are suffering economically and think that having a big prison located near their town will "generate jobs." They lobby their local politicians for both more laws, tougher sentences, and a prison in their town. The politicians put forward bills, recruit supporters ("you scratch my back and..."), and more spending happens. And more laws. And tougher sentences. And more prisoners. And more prisons. And more jobs. Everybody's happy, except California and the U.S. are deeply in debt, an historically high percentage of people are in "gladiator schools" in the state and country, taxes are way too high, and the Constitution has been shredded. Whichever game theory theories apply, it's a mess. And a tragedy. And a common tragedy, even a tragedy of the commons. --Tim May
participants (7)
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Bill Stewart -
Duncan Frissell -
Eric Cordian -
John Young -
Kevin S. Van Horn -
Steve Schear -
Tim May