Jim Bell Letter

[Tim May]

At 4:27 AM -0700 9/22/97, John Young wrote:
>We offer a recent letter from Jim Bell that describes
>prison and his prospects:
>
>   http://jya.com/jimbell4.htm
>
>It is published against his wishes, maybe. Read the letter to
>see the fear (or caginess) loss of freedom teaches.

And John Young, at that URL, writes:

"[Below my reason for publishing Jim's letter. JY]

XXX,

I'd like to publish Jim's letter.

I feel that I've been trapped into silence by his letter,
by the Feds, through threats to Jim. And that
he may be cooperating with them to understandably
save his own ass, and thereby wittingly or unwittingly
threatening others, including me, or at the very least
chilling public discussion of his case.

As with the IRS spam many of us received, Jim's letter
is meant to isolate us and leave us uneasy about whose
doing what to who, and thus making us easy to pick
off one by one, and to squeal on others who we've
been induced to believe is squealing on us, or to
distance ourselves from, as Jim is now doing. Mainly,
though, such crap makes us shut up and behave, and
that's the lonely dark cell of self-censorship,
self-imprisonment.

The letter needs to be made public, or at least I need
to speak up about it to get free of the trap. I'll put it
on my Web site, stating that it came anonymously.

John

--end quoted material--

John is indeed correct that the 6-8 month "delay" in sentencing Bell is
designed to send a "message." Both by letting the process linger, and by,
perhaps, inducing Bell to "remember" things that implicate others in the
whole AP thing. And of course to get him to "repent" and engage in the sad
display of self-criticism, Mao-style, we see in Bell's words. Very sad.

We long ago lost the "speedy trial" aspect of our system...even when OJ
thought a speedy trial would help him (as it probably did), the trial did
not get underway until more than 7 months after the murders (and of course
it last another 9 months). More typical is a trial date set a year or two
after the arrests. (Granted, often this is at the urging of the accused's
side.)

Now we are seeing _sentencing_ delayed by 6-8 months, while Bell rots in
jail. Exactly what did the presiding judge lack to pronounce sentence on
Bell the same day, or perhaps within a few days, of his conviction?

The answer can only be that they wish to break Bell, to get him to reveal
names and messages, and to draw out the process to maximize the publicity.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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