Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

what about the "to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million" ?

and adding to that, his legal fees would have also cost millions?

everything about their stance said "we are going to destroy you, grind you to bits", with all the "up to this" and "maximum that", it seems like only the very luckiest outcome would have left him with his life and that of his family somewhat in tact.

apart from the legal fees, those would go down the drain regardless, just for buying the chance to fight back.

can someone explain that to me btw, I've heard it a few times, but how can legal fees become so exorbitantly high? In other cases I've heard about numbers like $100k, which is also crazy high, but normal for the US, but for Aaron's case I've heard numbers quoted like "millions in legal fees", how is it possible that those legal fees are suddenly 10x more than the already high numbers I normally hear about? Does the price go up because he's rich? What happens to people that cannot buy justice?

Being forced to sink a million dollars will ruin most people's lives as well. The worst part is, as legal fees, it's not even part of the punishment, officially. As an individual, $100k is a tough pill to swallow, but a debt you can work yourself out of over the years.




The reason why those legal fees are so high is because you're not just hiring a lawyer to defend against a federal suit, the lawyer is just the point man. There is a whole army of support behind that point man working hard to supply him/her with relevant data. A missed detail can cost you the case. The other side in cases like this has a (from the point of view of a single defendant) unlimited budget to make something stick, so just like any other arms race your own resources (money, translated into legal time) will have to be brought up to match this or you will almost certainly lose, even if you are innocent.

There is something extremely wrong here but that is how it works at the moment.


>The reason why those legal fees are so high is

...because the penalties are so high. That's the actual reason. Because when the maximum penalty after a trial is a 30 day misdemeanor, you hire a lawyer and pay them two months of your salary and you make your case, because that's about the point past where spending more money to defend the case is no longer worth it against the possibility of losing.

But when the maximum penalty is a 30 year felony, or even a 10 year felony, you spend every dime you have, because the penalties are that high. And then, because criminals are so consistently charged with enormous penalties like that, which makes them consistently go all out on their defenses, the prosecutors go to Congress and say "we don't have enough resources to fight these people who have these high priced defense attorneys" and they get multimillion dollar budgets for individual cases.

Which brings on the arms race. So now you're not just spending every dime you have, you're spending every dime your parents have, every dime your friends have to prove that you didn't do it, every cent you can borrow from a bank or a loan shark, because the alternative is even worse. And the more defendants spend, the more prosecutors get to outspend them, because "we can't have criminals with more resources than prosecutors."

Scale back the stakes and you scale back the resources needed to fight over them.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: