It wasn't just Ortiz. Judge Nathaniel Gorton played a huge role:<p><i>Gorton is well known to the Massachusetts Bar, whose members whisper he rarely meets an indictment he doesn’t like. He’s noted as a hanging judge; prosecutors go out of their way to get high-profile cases assigned to him.</i><p><i>After Swartz drew Gorton, his defense lawyers told Heymann the pressure of the case had rendered Swartz suicidal, his attorney later said he told prosecutors.</i><p><i>“Fine, we’ll lock him up,” [Judge] Heymann responded.</i><p><i>Swartz killed himself shortly thereafter, in January 2013.</i><p>from <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/02/15/marty-walsh-aaron-swartz-carmen-ortiz/" rel="nofollow">https://theintercept.com/2021/02/15/marty-walsh-aaron-swartz...</a>
Carmen Ortiz sucks. Here's a whole lot more words on the topic (2013): <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/02/20/carmen-ortiz-investigation" rel="nofollow">https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/02/20/carmen-ortiz-investigat...</a>
"The takeaway lesson here is somewhat narrow: don’t be Ortiz. Establish some sort of line early that you are not willing to cross. Otherwise you might find yourself one day with blood on your hands, having forgotten that the law is not an end in itself, and that there are more important things in life than office."
it's always been really interesting to me how much power is wrapped up in district attorneys. in terms of a single type of elected seat that has the most discretionary power over the lives of other human beings in the united states, i'm not sure much matches it.<p>combine that with the relatively limited amount of attention the seats get at election time and the whole situation is sort of a weird singularity in american government.
Has anyone ever met a prosecutor who wasn't a really horrible human being?<p>I've known dozens of prosecutors and I can't think of one that I believe is trying to make the world a better place, rather than simply persecuting people to the maximum extent of their abilities for the prestige and career progression.
We need updated laws and moral norms around suicide responsibility. There are thousands of suicides per year where no one is held responsible but the person themselves when in reality their death was a <i>direct</i> result of being intentionally treated maliciously. It should be no different than felony murder. By this more just standard Ortiz is guilty and should be charged with murder. Hopefully one day reform like this will happen.
Tarek Mehanna, whose prosecution was her other brainchild, suffered one of the most shameful miscarriages of justice in my lifetime, including Guantanamo.<p>Note: I don’t think he’s a good person or innocent. He would execute me in five seconds flat because of the sect my parents belonged to. But they could have tried him for legitimate incitement to murder, not what they railroaded him on.
Aaron Schwartz died for nothing. Ortiz is having an upward legal and political career, while an young and inspiring tech activist died. It didn't even push the envelope on free/open access science journals.
> Energy intensive processes, such as cryptomining operations and data encryption, could require significantly less energy and have a smaller carbon footprint.<p>No. It will just mean more hashes per block are required.
Ortiz is just another example of two observations I have:<p>1. It's astounding the mental gymnastics of the ends justify the means politicians and would-be politicians go through for personal gain and when the details eventually come out, it's always wrapped in someone arguing "but we're doing so much good". You saw this with Nixon, the Clintons and a host of others; and<p>2. Just how fearful and, I would argue, cruel as a result the American people are that this kind of thing has an audience. It's the whole "tough on crime" mantra that so many view as necessary to seek higher ofice.<p>This whole "tough on crime" thing was central in passing Clinton's signature 1994 crime bill that destroyed thousands of lives and really ramped up mass incarceration, often for fairly minor possession crimes of substances that are now legal or decriminalized for at least a third of the US population.<p>Mandatory minimums, three strikes laws, the "are you a felon?" scarlet letter... they all speak to societal cruelty.<p>A more localized example: attempted reform of New York's "gravity knife" law (which has since happened [1]), twice vetoed by former governor Andrew Cuomo [2]. This was a law used by the NYPD to target minorities in particular, meet arrest quotas (why is that even a thing?) and for those with a record in particular, could result in a felony conviction and perhaps years in jail.<p>It's a matter of debate of why Cuomo vetoed it but my theory is that Cuomo still believed then he could be president one day and he was courting the "law and order" vote (eg the Manhattan DA and the NYPD police union both opposed reform).<p>We have prosecutors who often want to be future DAs, US attorneys, judges or politicians who are judged on conviction records, which can lead to juveniles being held for 3 years in an adult prison without a trial, ultimately leading to their own suicide [3]. Why? To extract a guilty plea.<p>These practices are disgusting and those who engage in such political climbing no matter what misery they cause to others--and I include Ortiz in this camp--are reprehensible.<p>[1]: <a href="https://stengellaw.com/gravity-knife-possession-law-change-new-york/" rel="nofollow">https://stengellaw.com/gravity-knife-possession-law-change-n...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cuomo-veto.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/nyregion/gravity-knife-cu...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-brief-and-tragic-life-of-kalief-browder/395156/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-bri...</a>
All these things can be true:<p>- Carmen Ortiz overcharged Aaron Swartz.<p>- Carmen Ortiz's action in the Aaron Swartz case show a lack of judgement that should have cost her her legal/political career.<p>- Carmen Ortiz is not responsible for Aaron Swartz's death.<p>- Aaron Swartz is dead because he had a mental illness.<p>You shouldn't blame Swartz's death on Ortiz. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people go to prison each year in the US and don't feel the need to kill themselves. It was Swartz's mental illness, which he had spoken about publicly before his death, that made a bad situation, which was severely worsened by Ortiz, seem much more devastating. However Swartz's response to that is not Ortiz's fault. Imagine a scenario in which someone commits suicide after a breakup. Would we blame that person's ex? If someone commits suicide after being fired, do we blame their old boss? The catalyst for the suicide is not at fault. The fault is with the illness that makes the person think suicide is the only way to respond to that catalyst.
"Establish some sort of line early that you are not willing to cross. Otherwise you might find yourself one day with blood on your hands, having forgotten that the law is not an end in itself..."
Somewhere a prosecutor is mulling over this decision currently, with the beating heart of Mr. Julian Assange. Individuals as diverse as Cornell West, Ai Weiwei, Joe Rogan, Susan Sarandon, Tucker Carlson, Jimmy Dore, and Eric Weinstein support his freedom.[0]
[0] <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/AgramSeth/status/1471170511782690820" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.twitter.com/AgramSeth/status/1471170511782690...</a>
“I would write things about stuff I saw at the school — that I thought would irritate people”<p>Ugh. I hate people that like to pretentiously crap over what others give them in order to signal their sanctimoniousness.<p>Also, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Why are we going after Carmen Ortiz again? Prosecutorial discretion is the law of the land, after all. I get it, it wouldn't get as many clicks as criticizing lobbyists, lawmakers, and deadlocked legislatures throughout the country that literally <i>wrote the laws</i> Ortiz enforced. That's a much more complicated argument and requires nuance.<p>The far right and far left (of which Matt Bruenig is decidedly a part of) are absolute experts in propping up strawmen instead of solving problems. Slacktivism at its finest.