This sounds to me like nothing more than an abuse of power by a DA. Those are much more common than people realize.
As an example, in a recent case that I'm familiar with in Oregon, a man that I personally know was unjustly charged with 4 criminal charges that the DA knew were unjustified. He fought. He won. He now has, in addition to a crushing legal bill, a bill for the time he spent locked up in prison on trumped up charges?
Why did this happen? Various reasons. When bf unexpectedly comes home to find his gf having sex with the husband of the house that they're house surfing at, the upset bf can get the gf to make up a rape case. (The guy shouldn't have been having the affair, but it wasn't rape.) When said husband is a Native American in a rural area, the DA knows that given racism and the fact that the guy was doing something dislikable, there is a reasonable chance of winning no matter what the facts happen to be.
But in my opinion the biggest single factor is that the DA in question is an investor in the private jail to which he sends people. When the DA can use the powers of the state to send people to prison, and PERSONALLY PROFITS from this, abuse of power is only to be expected. And even when the DA loses - as in this case - the prison still gets paid. And if the bill doesn't get paid, care to guess whether a hard line will be taken...?
I have no idea how widespread this type of conflict of interest is. I suspect that it is much more widespread than most people think (because the people who run private jails are well aware that getting the DA on board generates profits). But as long as it mostly impacts poor people that nobody cares about, it won't be a political issue.
>But in my opinion the biggest single factor is that the DA in question is an investor in the private jail to which he sends people.
This is happening more than it should. Lots of hands are reaching into the private prisons industry's resources (cheap labor). Some towns are investing HEAVILY in private prisons. The prisoners that are "good" get to work making products that can easily undercut any competitor.
When a whole county is dependent on a private prison, well, the whole system in the county has a vested interest in throwing as many people in jail as possible. Corruption all the way up AND down.
Absolutely. The USA is #1 in the world for portion of our population in jail, and I'm generally not in favor of increasing that. But yet I would personally heartily support a law to criminalize this type of conflict of interest with severe jail time. And while we're at it, apply it to politicians as well.
As an example, Arizona's immigration policies were written by lobbyists for the private prison system, and said lobbyists that they hired have pushed for similar bills in every state that they can get to listen.
Another travesty is that the people impacted by this become felons and in many places lose their right to vote. (In many states - Florida being a star example - this is because Republican politicians did the math and see it as an easy way to get rid of Democratic voters. Voter suppression is supposedly illegal, but it has been happening forever and nobody seems to care as long as it happens to dislikable people.) Thus the people who are most painfully aware of the extent of the abuse are removed from the democratic process - and those close to the victims wind up with an entirely rational fear that if they speak up too loudly about it, they will get targeted as well.
And as Aaron Swartz famously discovered, even if you have reasonable financial resources, you probably don't have enough to even try to defend yourself against this machine. Just think of how much worse that is for people who start out poor!
A couple of guys in Scranton have gone to a non-private prison for running in teenagers on bogus or exaggerated charges and taking kickbacks from the private prison company.
> But in my opinion the biggest single factor is that the DA in question is an investor in the private jail to which he sends people.
If this is true, it's a serious breach of legal ethics. It might be worth someone's while to get some reputable lawyers in Portland interested in the issue with an eye towards filing a complaint with the Oregon bar.
I'm not going to say that shady things don't happen in prosecutor's offices, but the ones I've seen tend to be political (trying hard to nail someone for a high-profile case because it would look bad to come up empty handed). State bars don't like to second guess discretionary authority in situations like that. Clear-cut conflicts of interests like this one, on the other hand, are the kind of thing state bars like to make examples out of, because they are easy to verify.
> charge you for time you spend involuntarily in prison
There should be a Constitutional amendment specifically banning this practice.
Honestly it should already be there under cruel and unusual punishment (obvious), due process (the process eventually said he was innocent so how can he be punished?) or attainder (punishing someone for something other than an illegal action). But since it's apparently not obvious, it wouldn't hurt to spell it out.
If the issue is so reduced to the matter of an (involuntary) private contract (as far as I see it; "owing" a private entity for "services" received), then as far as I can see, the prison as a private entity should be charged with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.
I'm not saying that's the way things do work, in practice. But it seems the counter-point to their argument that the prisoner should pay for this imprisonment.
I hope some competent and socially-minded lawyers turn this into a multi-million dollar settlement. (Of course, they wouldn't make out so badly in that, either.)
It's also a strong argument, I think, for outlawing the privatization of prisons. When government determines imprisonment is needed, there should be no shirking directly executing that duty. And when government turns out to be wrong, it should pay -- for starters, the direct costs of its mistake, not to mention appropriate compensation to the wronged party.
This would also mean DA's could not directly invest in the prisons they are filling. Disgusting.
No link. As far as I know, no reporter has ever cared about the story and so it is reported nowhere.
I know about it because the guy was married to my half-sibling's half-sibling. Unsurprisingly, they are now getting divorced. My family is involved in various ways, including a custody battle.
The whole thing is a clusterfuck that I want to keep my distance from, but can't help hearing about. I'll just say that if you run into a statistic like, "70% of natives on that reservation are alcoholics" - well there are REASONS why they are driven to drink. :-(
> An accused teenage rapper pleaded not guilty today to making a bomb threat on Facebook he warned would eclipse the horror of the Boston Marathon tragedy and make him “famous.”
That's absolutely disgusting. The media should be ashamed of themselves for twisting the words of a kid like that.
Well, they say that it is China's century. Didn't realize this extended to us replicating their domestic media model and forwarding the State's interest of total civilian control. Silly me.
In reading the above link, it's obvious that her arrest stems from more than just that one email, but rather a series of email messages and online comments that some had claimed were harassment.
That being said, it most likely is still protected free speech, as odious as those messages and postings were. I think the case will be dismissed, but her future in law school is probably over.
You are absolutely correct that her arrest relates to a number of actions on her part, apart from the email that the quote comes from.
However, without having seen the arrest report or other documents, it seems from the news articles that the quote in my post is considered by the police to be in itself harassment.
Also, to be arrested for protected speech is bad enough, even if the charges are dismissed. Imagine if every time you held up a banner you could get arrested for harassement, it took a court case to acquit you.
yes, see my reply above. This is potentially a serious free speech issue, please get all the facts before dismissing it.
If the police say "We are arresting person X because of this statement, and they also did some other stuff", then this suggests that the statements are part of the charges. But as I said above, it's hard to know for certain without seeing the actual charges.
To me, there are two issues at hand and the first is whether this statement could be called harassment. I'd say yes, as a part of a larger whole, it can definitely be harassment.
The second is whether law enforcement might call something that should be protected speech harassment and I'm sure that they will and do from time to time. In this particular case I have no problem with calling it harassment if the other allegations are true.
If just talking smack about Obama and the government in general is illegal then there's not going to be enough floorspace in Cuba to hold all the 'terrorists.'
Yeah and think of how many of them are at Fox News. Ted Nugent literally said on TV that if Obama won in November then he (Nugent) was either gonna end up dead or in jail. If that's not a specific threat against an individual then how can this kid's rap be?
I would not be at all surprised if the Secret Service have their own guest house at Casa Del Nugent, as often as they probably have to stop by for a 'chat.'
But what can you do, the right to wave guns around and hate the government is practically baked into the Constitution (to a point.) A lot of my facebook friends agree with him, and use Glenn Beck as a primary source for all their Obama news, and honestly believe the country would be a better place with fewer laws and more dakka and the White House burned to the ground. I'm Texan, so that kind of thing comes with the territory.
But as long as you don't actually do anything you should be free to say what you like.
Man, if everyone who had posted "Fuck politics. Fuck Bush. Fuck the government!" were prosecuted as terrorists, there would be no one left on the internet.
Wow, this is disgusting. Is this kid really being held without bail because he posted rap lyrics on Facebook? I feel like we're not hearing the full story here, but either way given his age and the fact they supposedly found nothing to support the claims they're holding him on, this is atrocious and I hope this story comes to light, so it can play out fairly in the public eye under fair scrutiny.
From what I initially read about it, he also posted a video to youtube verbalizing the rap lyrics.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press will be obliterated under the boot of the fake war on terror. You've got both sides of the political aisle working 24/7 on it.
I feel like we're not hearing the full story here...
This is precisely why accusations are so damaging, even if one is acquitted. People assume that there must be more they don't know, and the accused's reputation is forever tainted.
Take a look at these incinerating words, I find them very threatening:
"my flow! I'm a mother fckin criminal!
my flow! on your TV and radio!
my flow! come and check out my video!
here we go
everybody say fck the president!
my flow! I'm a mother fckin criminal!
my flow! on your TV and radio!
my flow! come and check out my video!
everybody say fck the government!"
The Supreme Court case to look up is Virginia v. Black (2003). It has the definition of a true threat as "those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals."
If the facts on the web site are correct, than this is really something that needs more attention. One hand you have people looking to hurt this country which must be stopped, but then on the other you have stories like this. It seems this would be a story that I think it would be good if it were picked up on by larger media to either help ley this boy go, or bring up the true facts of this case.
The title is written as if unlawful statements are somehow made legal when posted on Facebook. The site then goes on to make a big deal about that: "all for something he posted on Facebook".
Of course statements made on Facebook can be criminal. Threats against another are not neutralized because they happen online. Neither is a criminal conspiracy. So the article blithely pretending that this alone should make us outraged is frankly insulting.
The statements in question don't appear to be criminal, but the submitter should link to something that doesn't start out trying to convince us of this with meaningless tripe.
Certainly criminal statements can be written on Facebook, but could you point out what that is in this case? Should Ice-T have been imprisoned for Cop Killer?
Trying to avoid political discussion and ask something about startups and law:
When you run a site that allows users to post stuff do you have an obligation to hand over details when the law comes knocking?
What do you do if this teenager posted stuff like this on your website under a pseudonym, and law enforcement came to you asking for his identifying information?
Do you wait until they come back with correctly formed court documents signed by a judge? do you go further, and take it to court yourself? Do you risk jail time to protect anonymity of your users?
I guess this is different based on what country you're in and what your product is.
If those are actually the facts of this case, sounds to me like he just has a terrible lawyer.
For what it's worth I'm not a lawyer in Massachusetts. However in most jurisdictions I'm familiar with it would NOT be a difficult or expensive task to get him before a court to test the basis for the charges against him.
The facts are straightforward, there isn't copious amounts of evidence to work through. Simply interpretation of a statute which could be sorted in a morning's hearing.
It's not the court system post-arrest that is to be worried about. They usually have rationality in cases like this. Such as the young girl who was charged for using explosives at school when it was only a small experiment with a water bottle.
It's the fact he was arrested by the state at all in the first place.
“We took this very seriously,” Chief Solomon said. “He posted a threat in the form of rap where he mentioned the White House, the Boston Marathon bombing, and said ‘everybody you will see what I am going to do, kill people.”
The word "kill" does not appear at all in this rebuttal. Is the rebuttal being selective in what to rebut, too? Are the police misquoting him? What did he really say? Why does this rebuttal not cover this?
Its certainly shocking to see people being arrested over facebook posts. No sure what to do. Maybe start a campaign to encourage people to post 'terrorist' messages in protest? What can they do with 10 million terrorist messages?
Then arrest just enough to fill up the prisons. You think America could ever run short on prison space? Prisons are our fastest growing form of housing.
"I’m not in reality, So when u see me (expletive) go insane and make the news, the paper, and the (expletive) federal house of horror known as the white house, Don’t (expletive) cry or be worried because all YOU people (expletive) caused this (expletive),"
Perhaps this guy is really smart and a political activist?
You should check this out if you have a Facebook account. It shows you the crimes you're guilty of, all over the world, just for posting stuff on Facebook:
This kid is 100% idiot and deserves some major ridicule, but he isn't a threat and doesn't appear to have done anything actually illegal. This DA is wasting time and money, which offends me far more.
I wish terrorists actually did post their intent on Facebook.
What qualifies him as "100%" idiot, deserving of "major ridicule"? Do you know him personally and just thought you'd insult him, or are you basing your derision off one article and a couple of posts online?
"F* a boston bomb wait till u see the s* I do, I’m be famous rapping, and beat every murder charge that comes across me!"
You're telling me this is intelligent? You think this is free speech?
The punishment, in this case, should be community service with victims of the Boston bombing. I'm not saying this kid doesn't have potential, but putting that online shows a lack of sense and/or empathy. He can learn that while helping people who have lost limbs.
Prison time is rediculous, I'll agree (as I did in my previous post)... still think he's an idiot, though, and this is not a free speech issue that I'm going to defend. We have bigger problems here in the States, Mike.
They're lyrics. Admittedly puerile and tasteless, but every lyricists from Shakespeare to Springsteen (and lots of others that don't alliterate as well) can be accused of stupid lyrics in at least some of their works.
I don't like blanket value judgements of people's intelligence based on a ridiculously small sample group of their behaviours. It's sensationalist, reactionary and half of what I see wrong with society.
EDIT: I'd also like to say that you, sir, are responsible for one of my favourite HN comments in the last few weeks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702566). I beleive that made me giggle while drinking tea, and almost burnt my sinuses :-)
"Free" is not a characteristic of the content of the speech; it's a characteristic of the consequences of such speech.
You're right that this speech wasn't free, but that's because the kid's in jail, not because it's "nonsense".
What is more wrong with society, in my opinion, is that we interpret "the right to free speech" as "the right to say nonsense".
When you say that some speech doesn't deserve freedom because it's "nonsense", you give those who want to silence speech an easy way - just label it as "nonsense". And after all, ideological dissent is almost by definition "nonsense" to those who believe in the status quo.
By "nonsense", I mean inflammatory speech with no defined purpose. I base this on social norms because this is a society.
I get the argument you're trying to make. 99% of the time, I'd roll with you. The real exercise of free speech in this whole thing is our dialogue, which I will fight for. I'm not going to fight for Cammy Dee, however.
As an example, in a recent case that I'm familiar with in Oregon, a man that I personally know was unjustly charged with 4 criminal charges that the DA knew were unjustified. He fought. He won. He now has, in addition to a crushing legal bill, a bill for the time he spent locked up in prison on trumped up charges?
Why did this happen? Various reasons. When bf unexpectedly comes home to find his gf having sex with the husband of the house that they're house surfing at, the upset bf can get the gf to make up a rape case. (The guy shouldn't have been having the affair, but it wasn't rape.) When said husband is a Native American in a rural area, the DA knows that given racism and the fact that the guy was doing something dislikable, there is a reasonable chance of winning no matter what the facts happen to be.
But in my opinion the biggest single factor is that the DA in question is an investor in the private jail to which he sends people. When the DA can use the powers of the state to send people to prison, and PERSONALLY PROFITS from this, abuse of power is only to be expected. And even when the DA loses - as in this case - the prison still gets paid. And if the bill doesn't get paid, care to guess whether a hard line will be taken...?
I have no idea how widespread this type of conflict of interest is. I suspect that it is much more widespread than most people think (because the people who run private jails are well aware that getting the DA on board generates profits). But as long as it mostly impacts poor people that nobody cares about, it won't be a political issue.