Comment by tzs

98% of the commenters here have no idea what Swartz was actually charged with, or what he actually did. Here are a couple of articles that cover this from an expert in the relevant areas of law [1] [2].

Also, due to the very stupid way the DoJ calculates potential sentences in their press releases, almost everyone thinks defendants are facing much more prison time than they actually have any remotely realistic chance of receiving. Here's an article on that [3].

Briefly, if some hypothetical criminal committed some specific crime in the worst way possible, hitting many of the checkmarks that make it worse (such underage victim, victim is a law or government official or relative of one, victim was restrained, hate crime, terrorism, organized crime was involved, they were a manager or supervisor in that organized crime, they abuse a position of trust, they used a minor to help with the crime, they used threats to impede the investigation, they committed reckless endangerment while fleeing arrest, and the crime was committed while they were out on bond or bail from another federal crime) and could get a sentence of N years then N years is what the DoJ states in the press release.

Doesn't matter that the actual person being charged has none of those, or that they have some of the circumstances that can lower sentences (such as acceptance of responsibility, only minor involvement, helped investigating or prosecuting another person, diminished capacity, they self reported their crime before authorities discover it, they were coerced into participating, and some more) and there's basically no chance they will get anything more than maybe a few months of parole...it is going to say N years in the press releases.

Actually, it might even say some multiple of N, because they often charge the person with multiple things based on the same underlying harm. For example if you kill one person that might be first degree murder, second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, or involuntary manslaughter.

They might charge you with all of those (which does make sense--they are going to try to prove all the elements of first degree murder, but if they fail to prove of them they might still prove the elements of one of the others). If the jury comes back and convicts on several of them all but the most severe one will be used for sentencing. But the DoJ press release will probable make it sounds like you could serve N years for each of them.

It's completely ridiculous. They have the details of what they are charging the person with. They know about all those factors that increase or decrease sentences. They could do the math and give a realistic sentence in the press release.

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

[2] https://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-a...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20130211030902/https://www.popeh...