Asperger's defense fails Hacker gets 20 years

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Asperger's defense fails

Kinda a big difference in hacking stuff and looking for information (if that is what the Gary dude was doing) and stealing money and other criminal acts.

Intent and the guilty mind are there in this case.

That's effed up. The guy gets 20 years and Gary is getting the easy way out by being allowed to use his AS as a defense. How fair is that?

Meanwhile, the scum that crashed the economy is rewarded with enormous bonuses and favourable tax rates and the concession by so-called government that they rule... this person's crime wasn't big enough, as usual.

And meanwhile there are discussions about hacking by the government
and NORTON and ADOBE against everyone ... in the computers technology forums.

Did you even read the "article"?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6foB1vgMHQ[/youtube]

Unless you're doing it to obtain information for the Secret Service - then it's...well...then it's classified. Ssssh.

pssst 8) (The Aspie knows too much - let's send him to prison, where the bullies can shank him.)

first line of the article, Beth.

Merle

GOOD! Using Aspger's Syndrome as an excuse to get out of jail is lame.

Lets hope the same thing happens with Gary!

I get the distinct impression that many of those who call for imprisonment in these threads have never been IN a jail and fail to realise how unpleasant they are for those with autism ABOVE AND BEYOND that unpleasantness they should "suffer" in due course for their crimes.

Effectively its as if they were being sentenced to the same amount of punishment as an NT, but then receiving a doubling of the sentence because of neurology they cannot change.

this, and QFT.

You do a crime, you get the appropriate punishment, whether it's 2 days community service or life in jail. You can't get out of it that easily, if you feel you can't take it well tough s**t.
No one should make excuses but sadly too many people do and it makes the rest of us look bad.

I agree, however the circumstances in these two situations are totally different. This Gonzales idiot really did screw some serious s**t up with his hacking. His crime in comparison with McKinnon's offense is much more serious, and he deserves everything thats coming to him IMHO. The only reason Gonzales used AS as a defense in the first place was probably because he had heard of McKinnon and thought he'd be a copycat. As far as McKinnon's case is concerned, I stand by what I said before; he needs to be punished, at the very least to make him understand that his crime was indeed a crime, but certainly not to the extent that Gonzales was.

McKinnon did not cause near as much trouble as Gonzales did. I'm no expert on the justice system, but if Gonzales got 20 years, I would give McKinnon 3-5 years MAXIMUM and a decent chance of paroling out, simply because the impact caused by their actions is vastly different and in order to be fair the sentences need to keep that difference in consideration.

Mark my words, if they try to rationalize giving McKinnon the same sentence as Gonzales without taking this into consideration, then I will have lost all faith in the US Justice System. And when a system of government fails it's purpose, the people have the right to overthrow that particular system and replace it with something that works. Guess who will be spearheading that revolution?

Except that it ISNT appropriate if the punishment is worse than that received by any other person. Two identical crimes, one NT criminal, one autistic criminal. Both receive ten years for their crime in a standard average prison.... the autistic one is going to suffer MORE than his NT equivalent. This is not to say that people should go unpunished, but that the punishment should remain appropriate. Consider, would it be "fair" or "justice" to imprison someone in a wheel-chair and make them serve the exact same sentence as someone with the use of their legs, in the same prison, without the chair? Disabilities should be taken into account when considering sentencing. They should also be taken into consideration when someone disabled is IN the justice system or the penal system.

It would be considered torture to force a normal prisoner to endure a high-frequency noise 24hrs a day whilst incarcerated. Try asking the "warden" to turn the air-con off, see how far you get. (Picking a random autistic tendency.) Read the threads.. there are HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of threads from people saying how much they hate x sound or y amount of physical contact, how much pain it causes them to endure z event... placing them in a situation where they are FORCED to endure such things with no recourse to stop it is inhumane at the very least. Autistic people are VERY often vulnerable and easy to exploit. Is it then "justice" to expose them to a building FULL of people who habitually abuse and exploit others? Its pretty much a foregone conclusion that many of the people on this site would never survive the penal system, and as I have said before, I wager that many of those who most vigorously call for "justice to be done" would be the FIRST to cry foul if someone "crossed" their disability.

To clarify.. AS (like most other disabilities) is NOT an "excuse" to get out of things, but it IS a reason to carefully consider what constitutes an "appropriate" punishment.

"Doing the time" is the punishment, and I did mine. However, there *were* various times I was shown some extra consideration and even a bit of protection in spite of the fact nobody at the time actually knew of my AS/HFA.

One thing that might help here is to distinguish between the "punishment" of incarceration and the *circumstances* under which one's time is actually served. In my own case, a judge took specific measures both at my sentencing and later on to help keep things bearable for me and my young family ... and I had never said a word about anything along the way.

In my own opinion, having AS/HFA is not something to be used as a defense during trial, but you can be sure I will mention it if I might ever again find myself standing before a judge for sentencing.