Re: Jim Bell sentencing delayed
Greg, What's your take on repeated delay in Jim's sentencing: 1. A squeeze on Jim to finger co-conspirators. 2. Weak case, must use procedure to punish. 3. To let time served be the sentence. 4. Jim was up to something worse now being discovered (like 5 below). 5. Jim is a secret gov agent, now feet up in Tacoma IRS laughing at those who fell for suckerbait, screwball AP written by IRS as a sting (a recent book package to Jim was returned marked "Not in Jail"). 6. The court was hoodwinked by IRS, too, and the AUSA is preparing an indictment of the stingers and federal defenders and who knows who else that was in on it. 7. Secret Agent Jim is squealing on his double-crossing secret agents, cutting a deal with whoever else is double- crossing whomever. He's going down, they're going down, we're going down, the whole country's going down; Up the Revolution!
At 07:01 AM 10/31/97 -0500, John Young wrote:
Greg,
What's your take on repeated delay in Jim's sentencing:
perhaps I'm just low on conspiracy juice this week, but I think that Kent's suggestion that he's in the hospital is probably the best - his recent letters/calls to Blanc mentioned a persistent staph infection. If he'd been released, I expect that the docket would indicate that. (it's possible that they've got a "phantom docket" which has parallel but different entries .. but I doubt it.) I'm reluctant to wander down the "Is Jim a narc? Is Jim not a narc?" path because it's too difficult to reach a dependable conclusion with the little information available .. especially given that the feds may be trying to make it look like he is, or isn't, or is but appears not to be, or whatever. Too many people applying too much spin. My occam's razor thinks he's in the jail ward of the local hospital, explaining why John got his books back and why the sentencing hasn't happened. If the feds wanted information from him, they've already got it .. and if they're going to hold him until he testifies against co-conspirators, it's going to take a lot longer than a continuation until mid-November. So I doubt that's the reason for the delay. And, to answer Tim's question re why he can't be sentenced immediately - because that's not how it works in federal court. Federal defendants submit to lengthy interviews with a probation officer, who then draws up a report which summarizes the defendant's social/political/economic/pharmaceutical background, lists the defendant's prior history of education/crime/whatever, and so forth. The judge then imposes a sentence based on the PSR (presentence report) and the guidelines range, which creates a relatively narrow range of sentences matching a particular crime. The idea is that the punishment should both be tailored to the defendant, and be relatively standard across crimes of similar severity. More re determinate sentencing at <http://www.ussc.gov>. -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles@netbox.com | Export jobs, not crypto. http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | http://www.parrhesia.com
On Fri, Oct 31, 1997 at 07:01:16AM -0500, John Young wrote:
Greg,
What's your take on repeated delay in Jim's sentencing:
1. A squeeze on Jim to finger co-conspirators.
2. Weak case, must use procedure to punish.
3. To let time served be the sentence.
4. Jim was up to something worse now being discovered (like 5 below).
5. Jim is a secret gov agent, now feet up in Tacoma IRS laughing at those who fell for suckerbait, screwball AP written by IRS as a sting (a recent book package to Jim was returned marked "Not in Jail").
6. The court was hoodwinked by IRS, too, and the AUSA is preparing an indictment of the stingers and federal defenders and who knows who else that was in on it.
7. Secret Agent Jim is squealing on his double-crossing secret agents, cutting a deal with whoever else is double- crossing whomever. He's going down, they're going down, we're going down, the whole country's going down; Up the Revolution!
8. Jim is in a hospital somewhere. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
I'm not Greg, but I think the repeated delays in Bell's sentencing have obvious reasons. At 5:01 AM -0700 10/31/97, John Young wrote:
Greg,
What's your take on repeated delay in Jim's sentencing:
1. A squeeze on Jim to finger co-conspirators.
Yep. This seemed apparent when he was remanded to the custody of U.S. Marshals after his brief trial. Why was he not sentenced that very day, of the verdict, or the day after? How can holding a person for six or more months without a sentence possibly by justified, even in Amerika's fucked up judicial system? His incarceration is itself the best justification for his ideas. (The au pair in Cambridge, MA was sentenced the day after the verdict, and could've been sentenced the day of the verdict had it not been so late at night. So why does it take six or more months to decide on Bell's sentence? Because he's a political criminal.)
2. Weak case, must use procedure to punish.
Weak case or not, he was already found guilty, so this is moot. If the judge thought the case was so weak that he could not give jail time, then why would the same judge effectively "give jail time" by the act of continuance for so many months? It doesn't compute.
4. Jim was up to something worse now being discovered (like 5 below).
5. Jim is a secret gov agent, now feet up in Tacoma IRS laughing at those who fell for suckerbait, screwball AP written by IRS as a sting (a recent book package to Jim was returned marked "Not in Jail").
Probably just a screw-up in processing. I admit that I haven't tried to contact Bell, or send him books, or visit him. Bell might have _turned_, a possibility (which I doubt) one must always consider. But he was almost certainly not an agent all those years he was doing other things. For one thing, he didn't recruit others into doing the things he was eventually charged with doing....kind of a non-starter for an agent provacateur. I hope that if and when I am ultimately charged, arrested, raided, shot, declared insane, committed, whatever, that I have the decency to stand my ground. I don't know Jim Bell, except through his posts on Cypherpunks, but if the recent letters reprinted here on the list are really his, he appears to be a changed, or broken, man. I'd say the real reason for his six-month stay of sentencing is this: Real Reason: Psychological pressure, with the prospect of release for time served held constantly over his head, and the prospect of heavy prison time also held constantly over his head. Instead of sentencing him and being done with it, letting Bell then adjust to what was ahead of him, and probably remaining a supporter of his own ideas, they instead subject him to the well-known psychological pressure (even torture) of never telling him what's ahead. Kafka's "The Trial" comes to mind. No wonder the people are having their own trials of the criminals in the judicial system. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
participants (4)
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Greg Broiles -
John Young -
Kent Crispin -
Tim May