When a police officer shoots a kid with their back turned, wearing headphones who couldn't hear the cop say "stop", is the police officer responsible for the kid's death?
I am sorry, but that is a ludicrous analogy. Of course I would blame the police in that situation. However Swartz is the one that figuratively pulled the trigger not Ortiz. A proper analogy would be the cop arresting the kid and the kid hanging themselves in their cell. It is hard to blame the police in that situation because no one would expect the kid to hang themselves.
And for the record, I am general not of fan of the police. You can dig into my old comments and see various anti-police rhetoric to the extent that it fits into normal HN conversations. But that doesn't mean police or the legal system are responsible for everything bad that happens. Authorities can't be expected to be omniscient and foresee any possible extreme response like committing suicide.
Given your repulsion, I'm going to assume that means you do think it would be the cop's fault. Why, though? The cop is within their right to stop someone they find to be doing bad things; and the person ignored requests to comply, so the cop needed to stop the danger they perceived. Maybe the kid's walkman looked like a gun. The cop was doing an extreme, but technically available, option for what they could do.
But your own "proper analogy" doesn't match either.
What's more accurate would be someone is arrested for stealing an iPod. They did, actually, steal that iPod. They go to jail, and then they're informed, from every angle, that the penalty for stealing the iPod was going to be 200 years in prison and 14 million dollars in fines. They'll also have a felony record, so even if they get let out on early release, they'll never have a job.
Their. Life. Is. Over. For iPod theft.
Of course, the law on the books says it'd be 1 year in prison, minimum, and $500 fine, minimum; but, this DA threw the book at them, and promised it would all stick. 200 years in prison, 14 million in fines.
This person knows, now, that, at best, they're going to have a year or two of their friends coming to see them, maybe once a month, in prison, and then they'll be forgotten about, to live alone forever.
Because it was an iPod, they won't be allowed to work any of the technical jobs, because they might break the law again, or something - some other baloney excuse.
They've also watched tons and tons of TV that show what prisons do to their gangly selves, and they're not ready for that, either. They know they'll be abused and harmed.
So they decide to protect themselves because this DA also has a history of winning cases they bring to the court, at the strength of penalty that the DA requests.
>The cop is within their right to stop someone they find to be doing bad things
No they aren't. A cop has no right to kill someone unless that person is an immediate threat to the safety of others. A person calmly walking away is not a threat. Considering the number of guns in this country and the laws of many jurisdictions a person with a gun in not necessarily a threat either. Cops in this country are way too trigger happy.
>Their. Life. Is. Over. For iPod theft.
Prison does not mean their life is over. Suicide means their life is over. Plenty of people live happy and fulfilling lives after getting out of prison. Acting like this person's life is over because of potential jailtime is an insult to anyone who has served time.
And you are also ignoring that this person hasn't even been convicted or sentenced yet. As other people in this thread have stated, it is unclear if Swartz would have even served time for this even if convicted. The treats of the maximum penalty were potentially a bargaining tactic to get a plea deal. That is something that happens constantly in this country and another facet of our legal system that I don't support.
> Prison does not mean their life is over. Suicide means their life is over. Plenty of people live happy and fulfilling lives after getting out of prison. Acting like this person's life is over because of potential jailtime is an insult to anyone who has served time.
200 years. They have no expectation of ever leaving prison. It’s very easy for someone to believe that their life is forever over and that everyone they’ve ever known or loved will quickly stop paying notice to them.
> And you are also ignoring that this person hasn't even been convicted or sentenced yet.
That didn’t matter. When you have people standing over you, confidently declaring that no, really, you’re going away forever, the case against you is very strong, impenetrable even, this is all your fault and you’re a failure and people will laugh at your absence. That does *a lot* to a person.
> The treats of the maximum penalty were potentially a bargaining tactic to get a plea deal. That is something that happens constantly in this country and another facet of our legal system that I don't support.
Arguably, it’s psychological torture.
Just because a lot of so-called criminals can survive it without being overwhelmed to the point of suicide doesn’t mean they all will.
Apparently Swartz did. I imagine *plenty* of neurodivergent people would. Someone says “you’re on the hook for a 200 year in prison crime”, what else would someone who thinks literally think that means?
Firstly, the max penalty was 35 years not 200[1]. Even 35 years wouldn't be his entire life.
He also wasn't only hearing the voice of the prosecutor. He also assuredly had people telling him more realistic outcomes. Maybe that message never got through to him because he was not in the right mental state. It is possible that with the right people to talk to he would have realized there was plenty of reasons to continue living. That is why I think it is important to be honest about what killed him. We need to normalize the type of struggles he went through. We should make it clear that if even he can succumb to mental health problems that there is no outsmarting something like this. That is a more valuable lesson than "the district attorney has blood on her hands".
Where does responsibility stop?