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Re:The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video] by Lawtonfogle on Thursday May 07, 2015 @10:11AM (#9505136)
>an insanely inappropriate and disproportionate legal travesty

That is just about every case ever. Even the really bad people, the ones you and I and everyone else reading this agree deserve to be locked behind bars, have their charges trumped up far beyond what they are actually guilty of in an attempt to coerce them to take a plea bargain for lesser charges. To put another way, they are successfully punishing most people for insisting on their right to a fair trial.

Re:The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video] by ohitsdom on Thursday May 07, 2015 @10:22AM (#9505212)
Every case ever has had inappropriate and disproportionate trial/punishment? That's a very outlandish statement. Are you referring to a specific type of crime? A good argument can be made that this is true for many marijuana cases. But you seem to be talking about all crimes...
Re:The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video] by zimpenfish on Thursday May 07, 2015 @11:24AM (#9505720)
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/can-the-...

"I love how surprised people are by the fact that a prosecutor may have overcharged. This is something prosecutors do all the time, as a strategic choice, for various reasons"

(edited to put the 's' back on 'reasons')

Re:The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video] by ohitsdom on Thursday May 07, 2015 @11:27AM (#9505744)
Good info, thanks.
Re:The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video] by Lawtonfogle on Thursday May 07, 2015 @10:58AM (#9505503)
You missed my 'just about'. And while it might be a little overstated (I haven't seen anyone do a massive sampling to compare what the charges were compared to what they should've been, which is probably a bit subjective), I would consider it in the majority of cases based on the anecdotes I've seen. Anecdotes are definitely imperfect and worse than peer reviewed science, but lacking the latter, the former is better than nothing.
Re:The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video] by ohitsdom on Thursday May 07, 2015 @11:30AM (#9505773)
"Just about" doesn't leave much room for variation. But I get your point, and the link zimpenfish posted actually supports your opinion fairly well. My initial knee-jerk reaction against your original comment seems to have been off base. Which is sad for the state of our justice system...