9 ms·

The point of the 3 years seemed to me to be mostly making an example of the author to discourage civil disobedience.

by nealb 13y ago

VLM 13y ago
And they call it "justice"
- EpicEng 13y ago
  This guy purposely wasted the time of the legal system, i.e., he wasted or tax dollars to prove a point. I think it's obvious why a judge would not be overly happy about it. I'm not surprised he got more than the usual punishment.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    Oh come on, you think the taxpayer dollars are the biggest issue on the judge's mind? So he throws 10x the taxpayer dollars at the problem by putting him on probation for 3 years? Have you ever met real people? Ever seen someone make decisions because they're pissed off? The guy basically took a shit all over the (immoral) way the justice system works, that's why he was singled out and made an example of.
    - EpicEng 13y ago
      Not sure how you got the inside scoop into the judge's thought process, but yeah, I assume he was pissed for exactly the reasons I listed; his time wasted, police time wasted, money wasted. Who knows, maybe the judge is just a big jerk who is happy with the unfairness in the justice system, but you don't know that any more than I do and there are plenty of good judges and cops out there. You also don't know how this guy interacted with the police and the judge. He may have been a jerk himself. No one knows, but I do know that the legal system is not run by robots, and if your intention is to piss people off who have the power to screw with your life then, well... prepare to be screwed. This is in no way a commentary on the substance of the article, nor am I defending the judge's decision. There's plenty of unfairness in the legal system (I've been on the receiving end a couple of times in my youth) and it's not right.
      - pessimizer 13y ago
        The point was that putting someone on probation is expensive. If the judge was upset about tax money being wasted, and their response to that was to waste more tax money, then the judge >wasted our tax dollars to prove a point
        EpicEng 13y ago
        Ok, and your point is...? I never defended what the judge did, I just said that he should have expected the hammer to be brought down upon him.
      - VLM 13y ago
        "piss people off who have the power to screw with your life" Silly me, I thought the whole point of a formal professional justice system was to fix that, not make it worse.
        EpicEng 13y ago
        ...Again, for the I don't know how manyith time... it's not about what should be, it's about what is. If you want to live your life in la-la-land then don't be shocked when things don't go how you thought they would. Did anyone actually read what I said without adding in their own assumptions about why I would post it? Let me put it this way; I'm your boss, and you go out of your way to screw with me and make me look bad. Would you not expect retaliation? Would you expect the same treatment as every other employee? If you do then you're naive. Judges and cops aren't robots, they're human. You piss them off and, as most people would, they are going to cause you as much pain as possible. Like it or not, these people have a lot of power, for better or worse. If you want to make a stand and expose those who may be abusing their power then great, but don't expect that they will sit idly by while you do it.
        VLM 13y ago
        And also for the n-th time these are people who's sole professional purpose is to be be fair judges and protect us from abuse, and they are apparently worse at it than J random hacker off the street. Thats the core of what makes it shocking. Lets say we had a business division of people focused intensely and solely on the job of applying computer science principles to practical net positive business applications. Shockingly there might exist a regional dysfunctional group where no one knows how to plug in a mouse or fizzbuzz. You can't rationalize away the incompetence of that particular IT department by making comparisons to the proverbial grandma can't be expected to run Ubuntu and pro football players shouldn't be expected to hack Clojure because that misses the point of why those specific societal positions exist in the first place. Maybe even more on topic for HN, say someone wrote a garbage collector that actually stuffed the heap more full of garbage than when it started, and then when bugs are filed, rather than fixing the bugs, we get spin and rationalization that 99% of non-garbage collection code also put trash in the heap so its not really a bug that the garbage collector generates more garbage than it removes, etc.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - Guvante 13y ago
    He committed a minor misdemeanor offense (tagging the building), but used his own attorney and only went to court to avoid jail time. Sure there was a minor expense in dealing with the misdemeanor but the vast majority was not his fault.
    - EpicEng 13y ago
      I think you misunderstood my point. I was not defending the decision. What I'm saying is, if you commit a crime with the sole intent of being taken in to write an article which portrays these people in a bad light (right or wrong), then expect for them to be harsh on you. If you're surprised that they would punish you harshly then you're just naive.
      - Guvante 13y ago
        Isn't the entire purpose of the justice department to give out fair unbiased rulings? The cops being pricks is understandable, if a waste of everyones time, the judge being a prick is not. It is his only job to consider only the crime and the motives, and while his motives did warrant a stiffer penalty, they probably did not warrant that harsh of one.
        EpicEng 13y ago
        I'm not sure what world you live in, but it certainly isn't this one. Judges are human. You go into court and decide to be a jerk to the judge? Guess what; you're walking away with a bigger penalty then you would have if you were nice. The judge did not go outside his authority as far as I am aware. He has discretion to go either way, and there are very good reasons for it(which is one reason that I hate mandatory minimums, but that's neither here nor there). I'd be careful about assuming bias here. If a judge thinks that you deserve a larger penalty as a deterrent then that's not bias, he's doing his job. If he hands you the maximum penalty because you're his noisy neighbor then that's bias. I can't tell you what his motivations were.
        Guvante 13y ago
  - waqf 13y ago
    All criminals "waste the time" of the criminal justice system, if that's your word for what I would call "justifying its existence". Only a racist or classist asshole would single out one client of the justice system and accuse them of "wasting its time" because they seem like a different sort of person from the one the system is targeted towards.
    - EpicEng 13y ago
      Yes, but it's not the same as someone committing a crime solely to be processed and get a look at the inside of a cell. If I'm a "racist or classist asshole" then you're a naive moron. You seem to have read too far in between the lines; I never once said that I agreed with the decision, only that it doesn't surprise me one bit.
      - waqf 13y ago
        Well, I disagree that it's not the same (from the point of view of how the imaginary perfect justice system in my head would operate) but I agree with you that the judge may have thought it wasn't the same. I too worded my comment carefully: if the first sentence of your earlier post was to empathise with the mindset of the judge, then it seems to me that it is the judge whom I am calling a racist or classist asshole. I await my summons for contempt of court.
        EpicEng 13y ago
        Then we disagree, that's fine, but I wasn't empathizing with the judge. I was pointing out that this guy should have expected to get smacked around for pulling a stunt like this. Again, not saying that it was right or wrong, but the outcome should have been obvious.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
kkus 13y ago
I can't help but remember Aaron Schwartz when someone mentions "making an example". What can I do to try to discourage this practice of "making an example"? Has anything changed since Aaron's death?
shittyanalogy 13y ago
You know what I never understood? The concept of "making an example" out of someone in the justice system. How can we give one individual a sentence that is exceptionally harsher than the norm and not have that sentence be considered unusual as in cruel and unusual? The whole point is that their sentence is unusual for the circumstance. How is this in any way a just and equal, and legal for that matter, application of the law?
- SilasX 13y ago
  Because you can't catch everyone. So the severity of the punishment has to make up for the improbability of getting caught (Not defending the specific magnitude, just the principle.)
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    (Not defending the specific magnitude, just the principle.) It's a stupid principle. It totally fucking distorts the most basic idea behind a system of equal "justice".
    - SilasX 13y ago
      So, in the 5% of cases where you get caught, you just have to give back what you stole?
      - mindcrime 13y ago
        Sure, if you get caught, you compensate / reimburse the victim. If you don't get caught... well, sometimes you get lucky. But that's no different than how we do things now. Not everybody gets caught. It sucks, but it's reality. But the idea that we're going to "extra punish" a handful of people here and there to "make an example out of them" is totally incompatible with any reasonable notion of "justice" .
        rayiner 13y ago
PythonicAlpha 13y ago
No, its because he uncovered how corrupt the whole system is.

The point of the 3 years seemed to me to be mostly making an example of the author to discourage civil disobedience.

by nealb 13y ago

The point of the 3 years seemed to me to be mostly making an example of the author to discourage civil disobedience.

VLM 13y ago

And they call it "justice"

EpicEng 13y ago
This guy purposely wasted the time of the legal system, i.e., he wasted or tax dollars to prove a point. I think it's obvious why a judge would not be overly happy about it. I'm not surprised he got more than the usual punishment.
- jbooth 13y ago
  Oh come on, you think the taxpayer dollars are the biggest issue on the judge's mind? So he throws 10x the taxpayer dollars at the problem by putting him on probation for 3 years? Have you ever met real people? Ever seen someone make decisions because they're pissed off? The guy basically took a shit all over the (immoral) way the justice system works, that's why he was singled out and made an example of.
  - EpicEng 13y ago
    Not sure how you got the inside scoop into the judge's thought process, but yeah, I assume he was pissed for exactly the reasons I listed; his time wasted, police time wasted, money wasted. Who knows, maybe the judge is just a big jerk who is happy with the unfairness in the justice system, but you don't know that any more than I do and there are plenty of good judges and cops out there. You also don't know how this guy interacted with the police and the judge. He may have been a jerk himself. No one knows, but I do know that the legal system is not run by robots, and if your intention is to piss people off who have the power to screw with your life then, well... prepare to be screwed. This is in no way a commentary on the substance of the article, nor am I defending the judge's decision. There's plenty of unfairness in the legal system (I've been on the receiving end a couple of times in my youth) and it's not right.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      The point was that putting someone on probation is expensive. If the judge was upset about tax money being wasted, and their response to that was to waste more tax money, then the judge >wasted our tax dollars to prove a point
      - EpicEng 13y ago
        Ok, and your point is...? I never defended what the judge did, I just said that he should have expected the hammer to be brought down upon him.
    - VLM 13y ago
      "piss people off who have the power to screw with your life" Silly me, I thought the whole point of a formal professional justice system was to fix that, not make it worse.
      - EpicEng 13y ago
        ...Again, for the I don't know how manyith time... it's not about what should be, it's about what is. If you want to live your life in la-la-land then don't be shocked when things don't go how you thought they would. Did anyone actually read what I said without adding in their own assumptions about why I would post it? Let me put it this way; I'm your boss, and you go out of your way to screw with me and make me look bad. Would you not expect retaliation? Would you expect the same treatment as every other employee? If you do then you're naive. Judges and cops aren't robots, they're human. You piss them off and, as most people would, they are going to cause you as much pain as possible. Like it or not, these people have a lot of power, for better or worse. If you want to make a stand and expose those who may be abusing their power then great, but don't expect that they will sit idly by while you do it.
        VLM 13y ago
        And also for the n-th time these are people who's sole professional purpose is to be be fair judges and protect us from abuse, and they are apparently worse at it than J random hacker off the street. Thats the core of what makes it shocking. Lets say we had a business division of people focused intensely and solely on the job of applying computer science principles to practical net positive business applications. Shockingly there might exist a regional dysfunctional group where no one knows how to plug in a mouse or fizzbuzz. You can't rationalize away the incompetence of that particular IT department by making comparisons to the proverbial grandma can't be expected to run Ubuntu and pro football players shouldn't be expected to hack Clojure because that misses the point of why those specific societal positions exist in the first place. Maybe even more on topic for HN, say someone wrote a garbage collector that actually stuffed the heap more full of garbage than when it started, and then when bugs are filed, rather than fixing the bugs, we get spin and rationalization that 99% of non-garbage collection code also put trash in the heap so its not really a bug that the garbage collector generates more garbage than it removes, etc.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Guvante 13y ago
  He committed a minor misdemeanor offense (tagging the building), but used his own attorney and only went to court to avoid jail time. Sure there was a minor expense in dealing with the misdemeanor but the vast majority was not his fault.
  - EpicEng 13y ago
    I think you misunderstood my point. I was not defending the decision. What I'm saying is, if you commit a crime with the sole intent of being taken in to write an article which portrays these people in a bad light (right or wrong), then expect for them to be harsh on you. If you're surprised that they would punish you harshly then you're just naive.
    - Guvante 13y ago
      Isn't the entire purpose of the justice department to give out fair unbiased rulings? The cops being pricks is understandable, if a waste of everyones time, the judge being a prick is not. It is his only job to consider only the crime and the motives, and while his motives did warrant a stiffer penalty, they probably did not warrant that harsh of one.
      - EpicEng 13y ago
        I'm not sure what world you live in, but it certainly isn't this one. Judges are human. You go into court and decide to be a jerk to the judge? Guess what; you're walking away with a bigger penalty then you would have if you were nice. The judge did not go outside his authority as far as I am aware. He has discretion to go either way, and there are very good reasons for it(which is one reason that I hate mandatory minimums, but that's neither here nor there). I'd be careful about assuming bias here. If a judge thinks that you deserve a larger penalty as a deterrent then that's not bias, he's doing his job. If he hands you the maximum penalty because you're his noisy neighbor then that's bias. I can't tell you what his motivations were.
        Guvante 13y ago
- waqf 13y ago
  All criminals "waste the time" of the criminal justice system, if that's your word for what I would call "justifying its existence". Only a racist or classist asshole would single out one client of the justice system and accuse them of "wasting its time" because they seem like a different sort of person from the one the system is targeted towards.
  - EpicEng 13y ago
    Yes, but it's not the same as someone committing a crime solely to be processed and get a look at the inside of a cell. If I'm a "racist or classist asshole" then you're a naive moron. You seem to have read too far in between the lines; I never once said that I agreed with the decision, only that it doesn't surprise me one bit.
    - waqf 13y ago
      Well, I disagree that it's not the same (from the point of view of how the imaginary perfect justice system in my head would operate) but I agree with you that the judge may have thought it wasn't the same. I too worded my comment carefully: if the first sentence of your earlier post was to empathise with the mindset of the judge, then it seems to me that it is the judge whom I am calling a racist or classist asshole. I await my summons for contempt of court.
      - EpicEng 13y ago
        Then we disagree, that's fine, but I wasn't empathizing with the judge. I was pointing out that this guy should have expected to get smacked around for pulling a stunt like this. Again, not saying that it was right or wrong, but the outcome should have been obvious.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

kkus 13y ago

I can't help but remember Aaron Schwartz when someone mentions "making an example". What can I do to try to discourage this practice of "making an example"? Has anything changed since Aaron's death?

shittyanalogy 13y ago

You know what I never understood? The concept of "making an example" out of someone in the justice system. How can we give one individual a sentence that is exceptionally harsher than the norm and not have that sentence be considered unusual as in cruel and unusual? The whole point is that their sentence is unusual for the circumstance. How is this in any way a just and equal, and legal for that matter, application of the law?

SilasX 13y ago
Because you can't catch everyone. So the severity of the punishment has to make up for the improbability of getting caught (Not defending the specific magnitude, just the principle.)
- mindcrime 13y ago
  (Not defending the specific magnitude, just the principle.) It's a stupid principle. It totally fucking distorts the most basic idea behind a system of equal "justice".
  - SilasX 13y ago
    So, in the 5% of cases where you get caught, you just have to give back what you stole?
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      Sure, if you get caught, you compensate / reimburse the victim. If you don't get caught... well, sometimes you get lucky. But that's no different than how we do things now. Not everybody gets caught. It sucks, but it's reality. But the idea that we're going to "extra punish" a handful of people here and there to "make an example out of them" is totally incompatible with any reasonable notion of "justice" .
      - rayiner 13y ago

PythonicAlpha 13y ago

No, its because he uncovered how corrupt the whole system is.