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30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

xrd

Comments (153)

  • Chinjut
    A lot of people in these Hacker News comments are accepting the framing that moving the zines is evidence tampering and therefore deserves a 30 year sentence. What crime are zines evidence of?
  • Xorakios
    Here's the case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/antifa-cell-members-con...The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation being sought under a federal warrant after being called by his wife and asking him to do so. The warrant was for documentation after the protesters shot fireworks to bring out first responders from the ICE facility, and allegedly one of the group shot a responder in the neck instead of the head.A lot of stuff to scrutinize and complain about in the sentence, but it wasn't just "transporting Zines"
  • xrd
    Up until now these crazy cases have been rejected by the courts. But this feels like a crack in the dam. A judge actually sentenced someone to 30 years for hiding zines, zines that had been published for years. This was under the pretense hiding those zines was hiding evidence of criminality. And the criminality was worth 75 years. For someone who was at a protest where a federal agent was shot, but was not the shooter.Does anyone have a link to details on the case because there must have been more details, like these two were accused of planning a murder in advance, because otherwise this seems insane. It seems insane no matter what, but if this was a judge making a bunch of logical leaps while guided by DOJ lawyers, something is really broken
  • arjie
    It's pretty straightforward that if someone tells you to hide something because they've been arrested and they think it ties them to some criminal act, and then you hide it, you're an accessory to the crime. 30 years for that seems harsh though I anticipate they will be pardoned by the next Democratic Party President.Describing such an act without the obvious context is a pretty good way to point out that it's partisan text and likely misrepresents other things. Listen, we've all been on the Internet a few decades. This kind of understatement of things is not new to any of us. "Oh so just because your country thinks it's not a big deal for someone to go to America to fly a plane means it should get bombed?" No, champ, it's the flying of the plane into the WTC and subsequent sheltering of the guy who planned it that does that.
  • anon
    undefined
  • WalterGR
  • jcims
    This single thread on HN has made me hate the term 'zines'.
  • dghlsakjg
    This judge has a very high rate of overturned rulings, and reliably rules for conservative causes.Prosecutors openly acknowledge strategically filing cases in his court for conservative causes.It isn't a mistake that he was the judge here, and there is a very good chance the sentences will be overturned if not entire cases.Of course, that doesn't matter to these defendants, some of whom probably do deserve punishment for what they did, and all of whom will suffer through years of appeals, stress, etc. because some prosecutor wanted to make their career on a big case, and will have moved on years before this is all resolved.In short, the case was made for headlines, and after putting the defendants through hell, appeals will invalidate most of those headlines after incurring great expense on behalf of the taxpayers and defendants.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_O%27Connor
  • type0
    Is there a functional Samizdat in US?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat
  • randomNumber7
    > But lots of people believe political violence is sometimes justified. If someone who believes punching Nazis is justified...This article seems a bit based though. Political violence can obviously not be tolerated in a democracy.
  • juleiie
    It’s interesting that USA government fears antifascists so much.No amount of declamations comes off louder than who you consider your enemy
  • ChrisArchitect
    More discussion:Texas man sentenced to 30 years for transporting pamphletshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48659703Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zineshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649884
  • nightsd01
    Not surprising. Trump supporters really need to stop pretending that they aren't fascists, because this shit is clearly fascistic
  • SidewaysView
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  • AuthAuth
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  • gos9
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  • poplarsol
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  • londons_explore
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  • tumetab1
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  • SE5pc3JhY2lzdA
    "The harsh sentence for a defendant who wasn’t even at the Prairieland protest"The proud boys leader, that spent 5 years in prison for J6, wasn't even at the protest.shrug
  • magenta4
    Freedom of speech is absolute. It doesn't matter what the government thinks of the situation. It isn't a "crime" to move publications, even if the police think that.It's sickening how this could even possibly happen.
  • newaccount670
    "Trump's efforts to outlaw free speech" is a wild thing to put in the lede. Trump isn't doing anything more to outlaw free speech here than Biden did with the Jan 6 prosecutions.Effective propaganda needs to be subtle so that most people don't realize they're being deceived. These authors clearly have no idea what they're doing.