Prosecution of Swartz Typical for the "Sick Culture" Pervading the DOJ 443
tukang writes "According to a report in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, State prosecutors had planned to let Swartz off with a warning and Swartz would not have faced any criminal proceedings or prison time had it not been for the decision of Carmen Ortiz's office to intervene and take over the case."
Although the CNET article focuses on Aaron Swartz's particular case, the original article calls attention to general abuse of power within the DOJ: "It seems never to have occurred to Ortiz, nor to the career prosecutors in her office in charge of the prosecution, Stephen Heymann and Scott Garland, that there is something wrong with overcharging, and then raising the ante, merely to wring a guilty plea to a dubious statute. Nor does it occur generally to federal prosecutors that there’s something wrong with bringing prosecutions so complex that they are guaranteed to bankrupt all but the wealthiest. These tactics have become so normal within the Department of Justice that few who operate within the bowels of this increasingly corrupt system can even see why it is corrupt. Even most journalists, who are supposedly there to tell truth to power, no longer see what’s wrong and even play cheerleader."
Honest journalism? Really? (Score:0, Funny)
'Even most journalists, who are supposedly there to tell truth to power'. Tell that to the jounalists of Fox News!
Re:An old saying. (Score:2, Funny)
I'm also very disappointed by MIT's treatment of the man. It makes me sick actually to think what his university did to him.
I know that this is MIT's management, and not necessarily academic staff, but to do this is disgusting.