>Most people don't have such inescapable power underlying their threats. The government is a good deal more fearsome than most individuals who aren't directly threatening murder in the traditional sense.
The government isn't a singular person. A prosecutor does not have "inescapable power underlying their threats". They are a single person in a system. There are numerous other people involved in the system that have roles that serve to rein in prosecutors if Aaron allowed the process to fully play out.
>It's a bit disingenuous to call it a threat of 6 months in jail. That was a plea bargain offer with other strings attached, that came after Swartz was threatened with up to 35 years and then more charges were added bringing the potential up to 50 years. By the time the 6 month offer was made, Swartz had already been subject to more abuse and harassment than his actions could have ever justified. He was deep into a Kafkaesque nightmare before the prosecution offered the first shreds of mercy.
No one reasonably expected him to spend 35-50 years in jail so citing that as a potential outcome is much more disingenuous than saying he might serve 6 months. Sure, there are strings attached to plea deals, but it is a simple fact that he had the option to serve that 6 months and end any further threat of jail. He instead chose death. That decision was caused by his mental illness and not any person who might have wronged him.
> There are numerous other people involved in the system that have roles that serve to rein in prosecutors if Aaron allowed the process to fully play out.
That "fully playing out" you refer to is a process that would have most likely involved appeals carried out while Swartz served prison time—probably longer than 6 months.
I think you're following the prosecutor's playbook in trying to make 6 months and assorted other harassment sound more reasonable by comparison to decades of prison time, when it's still an unreasonable proposition. The consequences of a guilty plea were certainly not going to disappear from Swartz's life after six months.
He didn't have to wait for appeals that might take years, but he didn't even wait for a jury or judge to weigh in on the situation. That could have let him off without spending any time in jail.
The first sentence of my first comment said the prosecutor was too aggressive. I'm not trying to make 6 months of jail sound reasonable for his crime. I am trying to point out that suicide is not a reasonable response to the situation Aaron was in.
> I am trying to point out that suicide is not a reasonable response to the situation Aaron was in.
No, you're not. Nobody is claiming that suicide was a reasonable response to the situation he was in; that's not what you're trying to rebut. What you're arguing against is the suggestion that the overzealous prosecution should bear some degree of culpability for his suicide. Whether his suicide was a reasonable decision doesn't really matter to that question. People do "unreasonable" things all the time, and it is quite ordinary in many circumstances to expect other people to account for that possibility.
>No, you're not. Nobody is claiming that suicide was a reasonable response to the situation he was in;
They claimed suicide was a "reasonably foreseeable outcome". My point is that the decision was not reasonable and therefore the outcome isn't to be expected.
>People do "unreasonable" things all the time, and it is quite ordinary in many circumstances to expect other people to account for that possibility.
Ok, if we are going to hold people legally liable for the most extreme response to their actions, let's build a similar hypothetical. Imagine a similar situation in which a prosecutor is unjustly but legally railroading a person (reminder Aaron was guilty of a crime and no one argues against that, we just argue that the law he broke is unjust). If the person being prosecuted murders the person who pressed charges, does the prosecutor have culpability?
> I am trying to point out that suicide is not a reasonable response to the situation Aaron was in
Suicide is almost never a "reasonable" response to the situation a person is in, yet it's a very common cause of death.
People who work in suicide prevention talk about "rapid onset despair". They also talk about help seeking behaviour, especially of people who are men; young; autistic; and a few other characteristics.
Rapid onset despair is very important when talking about the criminal justice system. People feel overwhelmed by CJS, and death by suicide is very common in people who've been arrested for serious crime or who have been imprisoned.
Deaths by suicide of people who've been accused of, or convicted of, offences is not hidden information. It's a well known phenomena.
Would anyone in that suicide prevention community suggest that whoever's actions inadvertently triggered the rapid onset despair should be held legally liable if the person succumbs to suicide?
The government isn't a singular person. A prosecutor does not have "inescapable power underlying their threats". They are a single person in a system. There are numerous other people involved in the system that have roles that serve to rein in prosecutors if Aaron allowed the process to fully play out.
>It's a bit disingenuous to call it a threat of 6 months in jail. That was a plea bargain offer with other strings attached, that came after Swartz was threatened with up to 35 years and then more charges were added bringing the potential up to 50 years. By the time the 6 month offer was made, Swartz had already been subject to more abuse and harassment than his actions could have ever justified. He was deep into a Kafkaesque nightmare before the prosecution offered the first shreds of mercy.
No one reasonably expected him to spend 35-50 years in jail so citing that as a potential outcome is much more disingenuous than saying he might serve 6 months. Sure, there are strings attached to plea deals, but it is a simple fact that he had the option to serve that 6 months and end any further threat of jail. He instead chose death. That decision was caused by his mental illness and not any person who might have wronged him.