On Friday, Internet pioneer and
open information activist Aaron Swartz took his own life at the age of 26. At the
time of his death, Swartz was under indictment for logging into JSTOR, a database of
scholarly articles, and rapidly downloading those articles with the intent
to make them public. If Swartz had lived to be convicted of the
charges against him, he faced 50 years or more in a federal prison.
To put these charges in perspective, here are ten examples of
federal crimes that carry lesser prison sentences than Swartz’ alleged crime of
downloading academic articles in an effort to make knowledge widely available
to the public:
·
Manslaughter: Federal law provides that someone who kills another
human being “[u]pon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion”faces
a maximum of 10 years in prison if
subject to federal jurisdiction. The lesser crime of involuntary manslaughter
carries a maximum sentence of only six years.
·
Bank Robbery: A person who “by force and violence, or by intimidation”
robs a bank faces a maximum
prison sentence of 20 years. If the criminal “assaults any person,
or puts in jeopardy the life of any person by the use of a dangerous weapon or
device,” this sentence is upped to a maximum of 25 years.
·
Selling Child Pornography: The maximum prison sentence for a first-time offender
who “knowingly sells or possesses with intent to sell” child pornography in
interstate commerce is 20
years. Significantly, the only way to produce child porn is to
sexually molest a child, which means that such a criminal is literally
profiting off of child rape or sexual abuse.
·
Knowingly Spreading AIDS: A person who “after testing positive for the Human
Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and receiving actual notice of that fact,
knowingly donates or sells, or knowingly attempts to donate or sell, blood,
semen, tissues, organs, or other bodily fluids for use by another, except as
determined necessary for medical research or testing” faces a maximum
of 10 years in prison.
·
Selling Slaves: Under federal law, a person who willfully sells another
person “into any condition of involuntary servitude” faces
a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, although the penalty can be
much higher if the slaver’s actions involve kidnapping, sexual abuse or an
attempt to kill.
·
Genocidal Eugenics: A person who “imposes measures intended to prevent
births” within a particular racial, ethnic or religious group or who “subjects
the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical
destruction of the group in whole or in part” faces a maximum
prison term of 20 years, provided their actions did not result in a
death.
·
Helping al-Qaeda Develop A
Nuclear Weapon: A person who “willfully
participates in or knowingly provides material support or resources . . . to a
nuclear weapons program or other weapons of mass destruction program of a
foreign terrorist power, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall
be imprisoned for not more than 20 years.”
·
Violence At International
Airports: Someone who uses a weapon
to “perform[] an act of violence against a person at an airport serving
international civil aviation that causes or is likely to cause serious bodily
injury” faces a maximum
prison sentence of 20 years if
their actions do not result in a death.
·
Threatening The President: A person who threatens to kill the President, the
President-elect, the Vice President or the Vice President-elect faces a maximum
prison term of 5 years.
·
Assaulting A Supreme Court
Justice: Assaults against very
senior government officials, including Members of Congress, cabinet secretaries
or Supreme Court justices are punished
by a maximum prison sentence of just one year. If the assault
“involved the use of a dangerous weapon, or personal injury results,” the
maximum prison term is 10 years.
It should be noted that Swartz faced such a stiff sentence because
prosecutors charged him with multiple federal crimes arising out of his efforts to download
and distribute academic papers. Similarly, a person who robbed a bank, sold a
slave, and then rounded out their day by breaking Justice Scalia’s nose would
also risk spending the next 50 years in prison, just like Aaron Swartz did.
Indeed, if Swartz’s story reveals anything, it is the power of
prosecutors to pressure defendants into plea bargains by stringing multiple
criminal charges together and threatening outlandish prison sentences. Whatever
one thinks of Swartz’s actions, which were likely illegal and probably should be illegal,
it is difficult to justify treating him as if he were a more dangerous criminal
than someone who flies into a rage and kills their own brother.
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