13 years in prison for scribbling stuff in chalk.
Yeah.
Just wondering who, exactly, will be going to jail, and how much time they'll be serving to account for the various mortgage fraud & other abusive practices BoA has been engaged in systematically over the years, e.g.:
As I can see people are happy to get 1 month in prison. Great for them they don't know what it is. Anyway they forgot the heart of the US: the First Amendment, which is maybe even more terrible...
Why should criminal history matter? He wrote something in fucking CHALK. That he is being barred from mentioning anything related to free speech when his method of conveying speech was a temporary (comparable to holding a sign) and fleeting (from the rain, a hose, or a drunk on saturday night) is a travesty.
Unfortunately that's the way the law works. If you write on some property that isn't yours, it doesn't matter if it disappears in a second or lasts forever, you've still written on some property that isn't yours and you've committed vandalism in California.
The restriction to being able to exercise his freedom of speech is another issue entirely.
It's the fact that he's being threatened with 13 years that's significant.
Oh, and the fact some stuffed shirt from a major bank can basically order the local police department to go and arrest this guy. Like you or I might order a pizza.
You can order them to deliver you pizza, the question that should be asked is if you can effectively order it.
The last time I called the cops it was because a bum was in my backyard, next to my livingroom window, dumping out my trash and going through it. They never sent anybody. Am I to expect they will care when I complain about a hippie with chalk?
This is what happens to graffiti artists, though. If you get busted you get charged for every instance of graffiti that looks similar to what you got caught doing.
I dunno about the judge or the specifics. It's a RT post so not sure how accurate it is. The guy is in San Diego which is a very uptight republican town, so they are using gang graffiti laws as a hammer. Sucks, but pretty typical of how differences in locale can affect outcomes in the USA. If this happened in SF nobody would care.
Whether or not additional examples of graffiti are actually the work of the same artist is a fact to be determined by a jury. What do you expect the prosecutor to do? Believe the defendant's word of honor, only after being caught red-handed?
Choosing to commit a crime that closely mimics the details of previous criminal activity by others (or yourself) is not the brightest idea. That is a kind stupidity that I am not sure we need special consideration for.
It's determined by a cop who has a binder of graffiti photos. Graffiti cases never see a jury. The defendant gets slammed with a potential $500K fine and decade in jail and then they plea bargain it down to a lesser fine, probation and community service, maybe short jail time if it's not the first offense.
I think this is more likely. There are a number of cases that have looked at speech rights versus vandalism (Graffiti being the poster child for these). The "correct" way to protest the bank is to stand out in front of it and hold up signage, that is protected by law.
Do you honestly think that this going to be a case involving Jury Nullification? Jury Nullification is rarely used. Also a huge problem with this article is that it mentioning the maximum sentence that someone can receive for this. There is no evidence that he will be sentenced for that amount of time.
However, it serves as a funny sort of schadenfreude whenever there is plain evidence that that state is not some mythical civil liberty land of milk and honey, especially when one of the most common things I see talking about Texas is how evil and republican it is and how there are no sex shops and all kinds of damn fool other things.
At least headlines like this help people maybe reconsider where they want to end up. :)
(If this were a federal decision, I'd be raging. Since it's just a state or city being dumb, it's darkly funny.)
And you call people unhealthy when you disagree with their ideas. This kind of delegitimization of disagreement with specious medical-scientific authority is one of the larger problems facing the country.
Wait, so the judge can order the lawyer not to talk about free speech. That's like, a meta-violation of the first amendment. Not only can you not exercise your 1st amendment rights, you can't even exercise your 1st amendment rights to complain about not being able to exercise your 1st amendment rights.
The judge's decision is a point of law which can be appealed. Appeals courts, at least in the US, are normally supposed to deal with issues of law and accept the findings of fact in the court of first instance.
I really don't see how first amendment rights apply to his situation. You can't spray paint over a billboard and then claim you're protected under the first amendment, for example.
That being said, I don't even know that I'd consider writing with washable chalk to be vandalism. Maybe "littering" or something, considering how easy it is to wash off. Certainly nothing that should warrant any jail time (unless you're talking about a habitual repeat offender or something).
Oh okay, I must have glossed over that line. 13 years is still way too much (obviously), but that guy should not be surprised that he's going to be prosecuted and receive some kind of punishment.
He's only a repeat offender if what he's doing is actually an offense. I don't think you could consider chalking a public sidewalk to be a criminal offense, unless you're willing to say that a kid who draws a hopscotch pad on his/her neighborhood sidewalk is a juvenile offender.
A trial jury is supposed to decide factual questions, not legal ones. The judge tells them what the law is; the jury's job is decide whether the defendant committed a particular act, or not.
Arguments over what the law means or what's constitutional take place in front of judges, not juries. That's why ajuries are sometimes asked to leave the courtroom temporarily in the middle of a trial, or the judge orders attorneys into chambers - one side objects to something the other is doing as a matter of law, and the argument takes place out of hearing of the jury, because there jury is not there to decide the legal question, only the factual one.
How this works: defense counsel files a motion claiming a free-speech exception for D's actions. Judge looks at vandalism statute, finds that it doesn't conflict with First Amendment (and i should note here in passing that the First Amendment right is not unlimited; if you think it is, please give me your address so I can spray graffiti on your house). Now that the judge has issued his ruling on the law, he's disposed of the question and Defense counsel is forbidden to bring it up again.
In criminal trials, the judge makes decisions about what are matters of law. The jury makes decisions about matters of fact, because the jury members are typically not trained in law, whereas judges are. If you lose a case and appeal, then in the appeal court you must make your argument to the appelate judges on points of law - there is no jury in an appeal court. So the appellant argues that in a case like this, the trial judge misread the law. On the other hand, you can't bring up issues of fact at appeal, absent new evidence; if the judge conducted the trial properly but a jury rendered a verdict you don't like, too bad - there are some exceptions to this, but they're highly unusual.
Now, I don't know that I agree with the judge's decision in this case, because I'm not sure that an impermanent thing like a chalk writing ought to count as vandalism (although I haven't researched this or read the judge's decision onthat). But even though I may disagree with the judge's conclusion on law, the fact is that he's made his decision and now he wants to get on with the trial. The proper place to dispute that decision is in the court of appeals. defense counsel knows this perfectly well and probably has the appeal paperwork already written and ready to file, but it's easier to put on his shocked face for the public and hope that it raises awareness of his client's case.
Afraid of ending on the wrong side of this debate, but:
- I'm sure, if convicted, it's unlikely that he will get maximum penalty (13 years), sensationalist headers and all.
- If someone was writing whatever (political speech, gang signs, etc) on my property I sure would like them to be arrested and given a good punishment so they won't do it again.
And yeah, if you have even tried writing with chalk on a rugged wall you'll find soon enough that it's not that washable, at least not with some effort.
I have a rugged white wall used by mi nieces to draw using Crayola Chalks to prove otherwise. I don't have a power washer but I did tried washing it using a hose with an attachment. Then scrubbing it with soap and in faded considerably but didn't went away completely.
Still why will someone have to pay/do the work to clean up the mess that this guy was doing (for six months, 13 times!), just because it's a "political message" it's ok to make a mess and have other people clean it up?
Why should society foot the bill to jail this guy for any amount of time when a far lower sum of money could be used to rent a pressure washer to make him use to clean it up?
Wait, so you think maybe 1/13th of the max punishment (1 year in prison) is a reasonable punishment for writing things in chalk on private property?
If we're talking community service, repaying the cost of cleanup, or that sort of thing I agree with you... if we're talking about taking away years of someone's life I'm really confused.
I don't any prison time would be fair time at this point. Maybe paying for cleaning all the damage and doing some community service (he did it 13 times in a lapse of 6months).
Then if he goes and does it again, maybe prison time will discourage him for doing it again?
I don't see him as a political protester, but as equal to someone painting gang signs.
> I don't see him as a political protester, but as equal to someone painting gang signs.
Really? Even though his message is quite political? The idea that huge banks are destructive to our economy certainly seems to be a political idea to me.
In San Diego, property owners are responsible for fixing normal wear and tear on sidewalks. I don't know if this would cover cleaning up graffiti or not.
I'm not sure for the purposes of this case, but San Diego has some strange policies for their sidewalks.
By CA law the property owner is usually responsible for the upkeep of the sidewalk on their property. However, if someone falls and breaks their face on a broken sidewalk the city is liable.
I really hope he goes to trial with his case and WILL NOT take a deal. I'd like to believe a jury of his peers would see this as a protest...yet in my own criminal case, my lawyer told me "ignorance of the law is not excusable."
NSA taping all your phone calls and logging your emails, and now you get 13 years for chalk writing. But you still believe in the land of the free and the home of the brave
You're Free.
Really Free.
As long as you're not Brave enough to criticize the rich in chalk.
Try the same experiment in Russia (the place of publication of this story) and let us know how the experiment goes.
AFTER EDIT: I'm fully serious in the suggestion "try the same experiment in Russia." Let's be empirical here. Once we know how a lot of actual cases turn out, we have something to talk about that is more informative than one anecdote.
P.S. The pattern of upvotes and downvotes on this comment is especially interesting in light of the replies it has received.
Not only that, they are criminalizing the "promotion of homosexuality", a "don't say gay" law. Gay pride marches are also being banned due to "protect the children".
I'm sick of hearing the United States compared to the typical 2nd and 3rd world countries over and over, which is meaningless.
You're doing the same thing as comparing your sports team to the one on the bottom of the ladder - of course your team looks fine compared to the one at the bottom.
Why not look up and notice all the teams always above you?
Why do you think Russia Today is reporting this story, while leaving out essential information about how the legal system actually functions? It's designed to make the US court system look bad. If they explained the procedural basis of the judge's decision it would be a non-story.
As a former USSR immigrant, I'll just leave this Soviet joke out there:
An American tells a Russian that there's free speech in American; that anyone is free to just go infront of a government building and yell "American president is an idiot." The Russian responds that this is no big deal -- in Russia anyone is also free to go in front of a government building and yell "American president is an idiot."
For the record, I strongly support the bill of rights (I also hold the fanatical and extremist belief that there's another integer between the integers 1 and 3...) and am very much opposed to the surveillance state, hounding of whistle blowers, cruel treatment of prisoners, war on drugs, and so forth. I also understand reasons for Snowden to travel to/through those states (he does not want to go to prison and no one else is willing to have him).
However, I'll say this unequivocally: from a world-wide perspective, United States is far ahead of rest of the world (including many other liberal democracies) in terms of value put on civil liberties. Most countries are far more communitarian -- there are simply far more exceptions to free speech, privacy, etc... rights and (unlike in the US) many of those exceptions aren't even rooted in protection from a "clear and present danger."
> However, I'll say this unequivocally: from a world-wide perspective, United State is far ahead of rest of the world (including many other liberal democracies) in terms of value put on civil liberties.
I think you are categorically misinformed on this matter. I urge to look into the human rights legislations that have been enacted in many Latin American countries to see real progress in that area (and I say this as a person who opposes a large number of measures such governments have been taking).
there are simply far more exceptions to free speech, privacy, etc
Actually, in many ways I'd say that the EU has better privacy rights than the US. The Data Protection Directive covers a lot more privacy stuff than is covered by US law.
You're right about "free speech", more things are legal to say in the USA than in EU countries, however that's (I think) at the expense of other human rights. If you give more free speech rights, you take away other rights (e.g. the free speech rights of the Westboro Baptist church to picket funerals takes away the right to privacy and happiness for the family who are burying a family member. The free speech rights to say "$PERSON has erectile disfunction" takes away the right to privacy of $PERSON, etc.). It all depends on how much you value some things. (How much do you value privacy, how much do you value free speech, how much do you value right to life of marginalized groups etc)
> Over the course of the next six months Olson visited the Bank of America branch a few days per week, leaving behind scribbled slogans such as "Stop big banks" and "Stop Bank Blight.com."
I was feeling for the guy until I read this. He spent half a year writing disparaging messages outside of a business, that's an unstable guy. If I worked in that bank, seeing some guy writing crap that I have to clean up day after day for six months, I would certainly consider him a vandal. If this were a private residence or a family owned business, it would be harassment and they would probably be able to get a restraining order.
This is a clear-cut vandalism case. Your first amendment rights don't extend to defacing others' property, even if the defacement only lasts a few days, and even if the property you're defacing belongs to criminals. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Your objection here actually makes it sound like you're objecting to the speech more than the chalking.
Under existing constitutional law, he would've had a right to spend every day for six months standing on the sidewalk outside the bank holding the "Stop big banks" message on a picket sign. That isn't harassment, even if it were a family-owned business (though residences are a murkier area), unless he were doing things like attempting to block the entrance, or shouting intimidating stuff at customers. Sidewalks are a traditional public forum, and picketing on them is protected, including picketing against the business located there.
So there's nothing illegal with the content part: disparaging the business on a daily basis, right on the sidewalk outside their business. The method, writing it in chalk on the sidewalk, I'll agree, is not allowed. But it does not seem much worse than standing on the sidewalk with a picket, when it comes to what you seem to find offensive about the conduct.
A protest is not a one day event. You protest day after day, after day. How long did the civil rights movement last? How long did same sex couples have to fight to be heard? Can you find an effective one day protest?
Prohibiting his lawyer from mentioning First Amendment rights is ridiculous! What good are the foundations of our society, if they are not upheld in a court of law.
This really is my only gripe. I can actually understand the reason why it would be considered vandalism, but the purpose of the case I think is to oppress the message he was sending (he pissed off the bank obviously...that's where I'm happy). This is why we have rights to protests, even though it is chalk, if everyone did it, it still is graffiti.
To prove him pissing off the bank. The Huffington Post [0] says that he was instructed to stop by law enforcement, which he did. He pissed off Darell Freeman, vice president of Bank of America's Global Corporate Security whom aggressively pressured city attorneys to bring charges against Olson until they announced that they would do so in April.
What would the jury have to prove beyond a doubt, that he did it, not if it's morally acceptable, right?
If that's the case, it will come down to plea bargaining. Disappointing. Too bad it didn't rain away the evidence (even though it was caught on camera).
That's what the jury would decide, yes (it's up to the prosecutor to prove it, but I know what you meant). It's quite possible that it'll go to trial, he'll be convicted and get some nominal sentence like community service, then the moral/legal question will be the subject of an appeal.
Conviction != maximum sentence. I hope he won't be convicted but even if he is he's more likely to be sentenced to 13 days than 13 years. It's not a mandatory minimum.
No he doesn't. If he's convicted and if he receives a custodial sentence --- both big ifs, the latter moreso than the former --- he'll most probably be sentenced concurrently, as all 13 counts are for the same crime.
In refusing to hear the First Amendment arguments of Olson's attorney, the judge is presumably just reading the statute narrowly; there is no "political speech" exemption to the vandalism statute, nor should there be, since we're talking about private property.
But it's hard to believe that any sane jury would recognize more than a few dollars damage from water-soluble chalk, and equally hard to believe anyone would receive a custodial sentence --- which would surely cost the city vastly more to defend at its near-certain appeal --- for chalking a bank with a political message.
> But it's hard to believe that any sane jury would recognize more than a few dollars damage from water-soluble chalk, and equally hard to believe anyone would receive a custodial sentence --- which would surely cost the city vastly more to defend at its near-certain appeal --- for chalking a bank with a political message.
We've seen prosecutorial overreach over and over again on protest activities (and whistleblowing and computer crimes). This is more of that.
Whether he ends up being sentenced this harshly doesn't alter the fact that it is absurd, and immoral, that it's possible and at the discretion of a prosecutor who has a vested interest in putting people in jail for a long time.
That the state is taking the bank's word that washable children's chalk caused $6000 worth of damage is also absurd. There's a lot of absurdity and unethical behavior in this story, and I think outrage is justified.
I agree. If I lived in San Diego, I'd donate money to get rid of that City Attorney, who is flagrantly wasting taxpayer dollars on frivolous prosecutions that are trashing the city's image. I would have grave concerns about the judgement of a City Attorney who thought that 13 counts of vandalism for chalking a building --- a charge that practically demands a vigorous and expensive defense --- was the right way to get this guy to stop chalking buildings.
"[Olsen] eventually got a call from San Diego's Gang Unit in August 2012, when he gave up the artistic protests. The Reader reports that Freeman aggressively pressured city attorneys to bring charges against Olson until they announced that they would do so in April"
The cost of water (which we steal from the other states, of course) to wash the chalk away is much lower than the cost of the lawyer.
I wonder if there's a public choice/political economy theory on prosecutorial overreach and how to discourage it other than on a case-by-case basis (which is very difficult, generally).
It probably varies by location, but everywhere I lived I owned the sidewalk in front of it. There are public access exceptions to cross over it but that does include vandalism.
It's possible, so far I've only seen it claimed that he chalked the sidewalk. But, I haven't found much in the way of an original source. If the HuffPo pictures have it right, it's going to be a hard sell.
In California the sidewalk belongs to the property owner - as does the responsibility for maintaining it. If the sidewalk is in unsafe condition and I fall and hurt myself as a result, I sue the owner of the building erected there. This is one reason that homeowner's insurance is mandatory in California; your liability extends out to the edge of the road.
tptacek I can always count on you to consistently promote anti-human rights, pro bank, pro totalitarian viewpoints here, and you will consistently lie and misrepresent reality to do so. You truly have no shame and you are a sociopath.
The story is being accurately reported, so your criticism of the source has no merit. Here is the exact same story from other sources.
This prosecution of an activist for writing slogans critical of a bank, on a public sidewalk, and using sidewalk chalk that disappears with a small amount of rain, or a light hosing, has absolutely no merit, and is an abomination to humanity, human rights, and sanity. Justifying it and claiming it is a reasonable prosecution and the judge is being fair as you are doing is absolutely inexcusable.
It's true. I believe that we should be ruled absolutely by an oligarchy of international banks controlled by HFT-coding porpoises. Ee! Ee! Clk! Ee! Down with humans!
tptacek I can always count on you to consistently promote anti-human rights, pro bank, pro totalitarian viewpoints here, and you will consistently lie and misrepresent reality to do so. You truly have no shame and you are a sociopath.
And you're a misinformed fool. Quoting other sensationalist and equally inaccurate sources does not validate your point. The jury in a common law trial is a trier of fact, not of law. The proper place for defense counsel to make his first amendment argument is in the appeals court.
These procedural niceties, as much as you dislike them, are what underpin the rights of criminal defendants in the first place, by providing a mechanism for challenging the law itself.
The jury could also nullify here, which seems like a plausible outcome in this case. I can't see an outcome that doesn't make San Diego look ridiculous.
$10 says they don't, though - it wouldn't be that hard to find a jury of property-rights hawks in San Diego.
I'm not that hot on jury nullifaction, since it has the potential to systematically disenfranchise victims. Of course there's also the questions of victimless crimes, but like any good fence-sitter I can make an argument for the existence of a collective injury.
I can at least entertain the argument about being pro-bank, and pro-totalitarian; but tptacek has gone too far in believing that anti-humans should have rights!
Where does it end? If you recognize anti-human's rights, then they'll want to get anti-human married, and what happens if an anti-human wants to marry a human? A catastrophic release of kinetic energy, that's what.
We need to avoid this slippery slope! It's Protons and Electrons, not AntiProtons and Positrons! (I'll be Kickstarting bumper stickers for the cause later this week).
Yes, exactly: would people bring up a free-speech issue if someone wrote "gentrifiers go home" on the side of a new apartment development or an anti-Semitic message on the walls of JCC or offices of an Israeli company (to compare apples to apples, I am not going to say a synagogue)?
I don't think a felony conviction or any kind of jail sentence is appropriate here due to no property damage being done and lack of intent to intimidate, but this is not a free speech issue. This is "prosecutors being douche bags" issue (still a very serious problem).
I am not in any way saying that property rights should always trump free speech right: California, for example, extends free speech to private spaces open to the public ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Ro... ). I could even tangibly see a case if, e.g., wall of a privately owned building in a busy area has been set aside as a public chalkboard (for any kind of messages), but certain (otherwise protected) speech was excluded.
Defacement of property that isn't yours and to which you've not been granted access, however, isn't exercise of free speech.
I also find it ironic that most of the posters here disagree with ACLU on Citizens United: apparently showing a political film before an election is not free speech, but vandalism is...
The problem with Citizens United isn't the showing of the film, it's the disproportionate voice that it gives to those with money. If you believe that having more money should give you a larger voice in the political process, then all is well in your world. I do not happen to believe that.
So then you disagree with the ACLU, which says "the ACLU does not support campaign finance regulation premised on the notion that the answer to money in politics is to ban political speech."
The Citizens United decision was fairly narrow in scope: many kinds of campaign finance regulations are allowed to stand, except for restrictions on political speech by corporations and unions.
However, I just find it silly that many HNers claim to be unequivocally for political speech, when they're clearly willing to restrict certain kinds of political speech. The latter is an understandable position: I have plenty of concerns about money in politics leading to electioneering, I just personally think the cure has potential to be worse the decease. I'm all in favor of campaign finance regulations that do not restrict free speech, but I'll acknowledge that they may be less effective comparatively[1].
In general, I think it's important to acknowledge that there are trade-offs between liberty, safety, and equality and state which trade-offs one is willing to make. Equivocation or wishful thinking just makes one look dishonest ("will you buy my 100,000 node commodity-hardware distributed database that has 0.00001 ms latency, read-committed transaction isolation, and 100% uptime?")
[1] That said I doubt restrictions on speech will fix the problem of rent-seeking by moneyed interests -- it will continue through other channels; however, now these moneyed interests will have another tool at their disposal: politicians' ability to restrict political speech, e.g., MPAA lobbying congress to restrict the ability of ACLU/EFF to oppose parts of the DMCA.
Ok... so this is the relevant law as far as I can tell [1]
So, the reason why his maximum sentence is 13 years is because, the maximum sentence for a single act of vandalism of damages over $400 (see subsection b) is 1 year in a county jail. He is being charged with 13 counts of vandalism (presumably because they caught him vandalising 13 times).
Now, the Bank of America is claiming that it cost them $6000 to clean up all the vandalism (which is conveniently just over 450 dollars per act).
So, for all the people outraged over 13 years for chalk, keep in mind in california, vandalism charges are based on damages, not the means (which really makes sense). That it stacks up to 13 years is kinda ridiculous, but also pretty logical. It's not like its "oh, you vanadalized once and now you're going to jail for 13 years", its "you vandalized 13 times, and now a judge gets to decide how much cumulative punishment you're going to get".
You can point out all sorts of unfortunate points in how the law, damages, and punishment is structured, but the whole point of the law is to leave room for human discretion. The $400 dollar barrier seems kinda low, and that's really I guess where the issue is... I guess and combined with Bank of America's damages claims.
Not to mention that there is no way in hell that it legitimately cost BoA $6000 to clean up sidewalk chalk 13 times. That's absurd on the face of it. You can hose it off in, at maximum, an hour. I can easily hire a guy for $50 to hose off the sidewalk for an hour. $450 for that job is ridiculous.
My god, even when Americans try to protest and demonstrate and have their voices heard, the corporate interests have the law clamp down on them and even takes away their free speech rights.
Americans need to start protesting, big time, right now!
Sure, he almost certainly will not face the full 13 year sentence if convicted. Sure, the bar against first amendment arguments seem likely to be struck down on appeal. Sure, it probably won't turn out as bad as the worst case scenario.
These are all true.
There is something terribly wrong here, anyway. The fact that he's facing up to 13 years in prison for what amounts to graffiti or very-low-level harassment (the article made no mention of threats, e.g.) is a very bad sign.
When the government, or private interests directing the government, can threaten a dissenter with a decade or more in squalid[1], overcrowded[2], deadly[3] prisons for minor nuisances, we are all endangered.
OK, I don't know anything about US laws, but I really don't understand it. How can a judge forbid mentioning constitution or amendments in court? I thought constitution is the most important part of US law system and it seems this judge overruled it just like that. How could he do this?
A court case isn't where each side gets to throw everything they possibly can at the jury and the jury has to figure it all out.
Juries are exposed to carefully controlled subsets of all possible facts. What does this guy's mom do? What kind of cars do the people working at the bank drive? The answers to those questions are true facts but not relevant to the court.
> OK, I don't know anything about US laws, but I really don't understand it. How can a judge forbid mentioning constitution or amendments in court?
It seems to me that what happened is that the argument (which is one of law, not of fact) has already been made in court prior to the trial. The judge has rejected it, and prohibited it from being raised in the trial (and thus, to the jury) as it is immaterial to the questions of fact the jury is to decide.
Of course, if there is a conviction, the judge's rejection of the argument can be challenged as legal error on appeal.
How is it just to charge him with more than one count of vandalism? He may have only written in chalk once if they would have charged him immediately after the first incident.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 384 ms ] threadJust wondering who, exactly, will be going to jail, and how much time they'll be serving to account for the various mortgage fraud & other abusive practices BoA has been engaged in systematically over the years, e.g.:
- http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/10/24/bank...
- http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/bank-of-america-forec...
The answer, of course, is almost certainly no one.
People need to stop this practice of listing the maximum possible under best (worst) possible conditions sentence.
If he doesn't have a criminal history he'll get a month of probation and that's all.
The restriction to being able to exercise his freedom of speech is another issue entirely.
But probably someone did tell him, and his suicide was because of other things.
Oh, and the fact some stuffed shirt from a major bank can basically order the local police department to go and arrest this guy. Like you or I might order a pizza.
The last time I called the cops it was because a bum was in my backyard, next to my livingroom window, dumping out my trash and going through it. They never sent anybody. Am I to expect they will care when I complain about a hippie with chalk?
I'm not sure how a judge can exclude the constitution from a court case?
Choosing to commit a crime that closely mimics the details of previous criminal activity by others (or yourself) is not the brightest idea. That is a kind stupidity that I am not sure we need special consideration for.
I appreciate your optimism. I really hope it works out well for this guy. I am seriously glad I'm not the one facing these charges though.
However, it serves as a funny sort of schadenfreude whenever there is plain evidence that that state is not some mythical civil liberty land of milk and honey, especially when one of the most common things I see talking about Texas is how evil and republican it is and how there are no sex shops and all kinds of damn fool other things.
At least headlines like this help people maybe reconsider where they want to end up. :)
(If this were a federal decision, I'd be raging. Since it's just a state or city being dumb, it's darkly funny.)
That being said, I don't even know that I'd consider writing with washable chalk to be vandalism. Maybe "littering" or something, considering how easy it is to wash off. Certainly nothing that should warrant any jail time (unless you're talking about a habitual repeat offender or something).
Why not? The court doesn't have to agree that your claim is valid. To prohibit you from even making that claim seems preposterous.
Arguments over what the law means or what's constitutional take place in front of judges, not juries. That's why ajuries are sometimes asked to leave the courtroom temporarily in the middle of a trial, or the judge orders attorneys into chambers - one side objects to something the other is doing as a matter of law, and the argument takes place out of hearing of the jury, because there jury is not there to decide the legal question, only the factual one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
How this works: defense counsel files a motion claiming a free-speech exception for D's actions. Judge looks at vandalism statute, finds that it doesn't conflict with First Amendment (and i should note here in passing that the First Amendment right is not unlimited; if you think it is, please give me your address so I can spray graffiti on your house). Now that the judge has issued his ruling on the law, he's disposed of the question and Defense counsel is forbidden to bring it up again.
In criminal trials, the judge makes decisions about what are matters of law. The jury makes decisions about matters of fact, because the jury members are typically not trained in law, whereas judges are. If you lose a case and appeal, then in the appeal court you must make your argument to the appelate judges on points of law - there is no jury in an appeal court. So the appellant argues that in a case like this, the trial judge misread the law. On the other hand, you can't bring up issues of fact at appeal, absent new evidence; if the judge conducted the trial properly but a jury rendered a verdict you don't like, too bad - there are some exceptions to this, but they're highly unusual.
Now, I don't know that I agree with the judge's decision in this case, because I'm not sure that an impermanent thing like a chalk writing ought to count as vandalism (although I haven't researched this or read the judge's decision onthat). But even though I may disagree with the judge's conclusion on law, the fact is that he's made his decision and now he wants to get on with the trial. The proper place to dispute that decision is in the court of appeals. defense counsel knows this perfectly well and probably has the appeal paperwork already written and ready to file, but it's easier to put on his shocked face for the public and hope that it raises awareness of his client's case.
- I'm sure, if convicted, it's unlikely that he will get maximum penalty (13 years), sensationalist headers and all.
- If someone was writing whatever (political speech, gang signs, etc) on my property I sure would like them to be arrested and given a good punishment so they won't do it again.
Still why will someone have to pay/do the work to clean up the mess that this guy was doing (for six months, 13 times!), just because it's a "political message" it's ok to make a mess and have other people clean it up?
If we're talking community service, repaying the cost of cleanup, or that sort of thing I agree with you... if we're talking about taking away years of someone's life I'm really confused.
1. It sounds like GP thinks jail is reasonable based on "I sure would like them to be arrested and given a good punishment so they won't do it again."
2. He actually didn't say that 13 years was unreasonable, he just said that it was unlikely
I don't any prison time would be fair time at this point. Maybe paying for cleaning all the damage and doing some community service (he did it 13 times in a lapse of 6months).
Then if he goes and does it again, maybe prison time will discourage him for doing it again?
I don't see him as a political protester, but as equal to someone painting gang signs.
Really? Even though his message is quite political? The idea that huge banks are destructive to our economy certainly seems to be a political idea to me.
http://www.sandiego.gov/street-div/services/roadways/sidewal...
By CA law the property owner is usually responsible for the upkeep of the sidewalk on their property. However, if someone falls and breaks their face on a broken sidewalk the city is liable.
You're Free.
Really Free.
As long as you're not Brave enough to criticize the rich in chalk.
Good night, and good luck.
AFTER EDIT: I'm fully serious in the suggestion "try the same experiment in Russia." Let's be empirical here. Once we know how a lot of actual cases turn out, we have something to talk about that is more informative than one anecdote.
P.S. The pattern of upvotes and downvotes on this comment is especially interesting in light of the replies it has received.
You're doing the same thing as comparing your sports team to the one on the bottom of the ladder - of course your team looks fine compared to the one at the bottom.
Why not look up and notice all the teams always above you?
Aim higher, aim for improvement.
An American tells a Russian that there's free speech in American; that anyone is free to just go infront of a government building and yell "American president is an idiot." The Russian responds that this is no big deal -- in Russia anyone is also free to go in front of a government building and yell "American president is an idiot."
For the record, I strongly support the bill of rights (I also hold the fanatical and extremist belief that there's another integer between the integers 1 and 3...) and am very much opposed to the surveillance state, hounding of whistle blowers, cruel treatment of prisoners, war on drugs, and so forth. I also understand reasons for Snowden to travel to/through those states (he does not want to go to prison and no one else is willing to have him).
However, I'll say this unequivocally: from a world-wide perspective, United States is far ahead of rest of the world (including many other liberal democracies) in terms of value put on civil liberties. Most countries are far more communitarian -- there are simply far more exceptions to free speech, privacy, etc... rights and (unlike in the US) many of those exceptions aren't even rooted in protection from a "clear and present danger."
(Related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes )
I think you are categorically misinformed on this matter. I urge to look into the human rights legislations that have been enacted in many Latin American countries to see real progress in that area (and I say this as a person who opposes a large number of measures such governments have been taking).
Actually, in many ways I'd say that the EU has better privacy rights than the US. The Data Protection Directive covers a lot more privacy stuff than is covered by US law.
You're right about "free speech", more things are legal to say in the USA than in EU countries, however that's (I think) at the expense of other human rights. If you give more free speech rights, you take away other rights (e.g. the free speech rights of the Westboro Baptist church to picket funerals takes away the right to privacy and happiness for the family who are burying a family member. The free speech rights to say "$PERSON has erectile disfunction" takes away the right to privacy of $PERSON, etc.). It all depends on how much you value some things. (How much do you value privacy, how much do you value free speech, how much do you value right to life of marginalized groups etc)
(I'm using EU because I'm more familiar with it)
I was feeling for the guy until I read this. He spent half a year writing disparaging messages outside of a business, that's an unstable guy. If I worked in that bank, seeing some guy writing crap that I have to clean up day after day for six months, I would certainly consider him a vandal. If this were a private residence or a family owned business, it would be harassment and they would probably be able to get a restraining order.
This is a clear-cut vandalism case. Your first amendment rights don't extend to defacing others' property, even if the defacement only lasts a few days, and even if the property you're defacing belongs to criminals. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Under existing constitutional law, he would've had a right to spend every day for six months standing on the sidewalk outside the bank holding the "Stop big banks" message on a picket sign. That isn't harassment, even if it were a family-owned business (though residences are a murkier area), unless he were doing things like attempting to block the entrance, or shouting intimidating stuff at customers. Sidewalks are a traditional public forum, and picketing on them is protected, including picketing against the business located there.
So there's nothing illegal with the content part: disparaging the business on a daily basis, right on the sidewalk outside their business. The method, writing it in chalk on the sidewalk, I'll agree, is not allowed. But it does not seem much worse than standing on the sidewalk with a picket, when it comes to what you seem to find offensive about the conduct.
This really is my only gripe. I can actually understand the reason why it would be considered vandalism, but the purpose of the case I think is to oppress the message he was sending (he pissed off the bank obviously...that's where I'm happy). This is why we have rights to protests, even though it is chalk, if everyone did it, it still is graffiti.
[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/jeff-olson-californ...
No it isn't. The jury is not competent to examine constitutional arguments. The correct place for that debate is the Court of Appeals.
If that's the case, it will come down to plea bargaining. Disappointing. Too bad it didn't rain away the evidence (even though it was caught on camera).
http://www.yolo.courts.ca.gov/forms/Sent%20Guideline%20-%20V...
The problem is, if he violates probation through additional activities, he will then face escalated penalties.
If you think this case is an unreasonable waste of resources, please contact Goldsmith and let him know.
Jan Goldsmith can be reached at 619-236-6220 or cityattorney@sandiego.gov
People vs. Olson is case #M153987
Here's the statute:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr...
In refusing to hear the First Amendment arguments of Olson's attorney, the judge is presumably just reading the statute narrowly; there is no "political speech" exemption to the vandalism statute, nor should there be, since we're talking about private property.
But it's hard to believe that any sane jury would recognize more than a few dollars damage from water-soluble chalk, and equally hard to believe anyone would receive a custodial sentence --- which would surely cost the city vastly more to defend at its near-certain appeal --- for chalking a bank with a political message.
Don't get your news from RT.
I hope you're right.
Hear. Hear. From an earlier comment thread about the unreliability of rt.com as a source:
> The source of the submitted article, rt.com, is not known for careful journalism.
Understatement of the year.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247829
Whether he ends up being sentenced this harshly doesn't alter the fact that it is absurd, and immoral, that it's possible and at the discretion of a prosecutor who has a vested interest in putting people in jail for a long time.
That the state is taking the bank's word that washable children's chalk caused $6000 worth of damage is also absurd. There's a lot of absurdity and unethical behavior in this story, and I think outrage is justified.
The RT story is still ridiculous.
From the article:
"[Olsen] eventually got a call from San Diego's Gang Unit in August 2012, when he gave up the artistic protests. The Reader reports that Freeman aggressively pressured city attorneys to bring charges against Olson until they announced that they would do so in April"
I wonder if there's a public choice/political economy theory on prosecutorial overreach and how to discourage it other than on a case-by-case basis (which is very difficult, generally).
http://www.10news.com/news/jeff-olson-man-who-used-chalk-to-...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/alexander-schaefer-...
The story is being accurately reported, so your criticism of the source has no merit. Here is the exact same story from other sources.
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2013/jun/2...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/jeff-olson-californ...
http://www.10news.com/news/jeff-olson-man-who-used-chalk-to-...
This prosecution of an activist for writing slogans critical of a bank, on a public sidewalk, and using sidewalk chalk that disappears with a small amount of rain, or a light hosing, has absolutely no merit, and is an abomination to humanity, human rights, and sanity. Justifying it and claiming it is a reasonable prosecution and the judge is being fair as you are doing is absolutely inexcusable.
And you're a misinformed fool. Quoting other sensationalist and equally inaccurate sources does not validate your point. The jury in a common law trial is a trier of fact, not of law. The proper place for defense counsel to make his first amendment argument is in the appeals court.
These procedural niceties, as much as you dislike them, are what underpin the rights of criminal defendants in the first place, by providing a mechanism for challenging the law itself.
I'm not that hot on jury nullifaction, since it has the potential to systematically disenfranchise victims. Of course there's also the questions of victimless crimes, but like any good fence-sitter I can make an argument for the existence of a collective injury.
Where does it end? If you recognize anti-human's rights, then they'll want to get anti-human married, and what happens if an anti-human wants to marry a human? A catastrophic release of kinetic energy, that's what.
We need to avoid this slippery slope! It's Protons and Electrons, not AntiProtons and Positrons! (I'll be Kickstarting bumper stickers for the cause later this week).
I don't think a felony conviction or any kind of jail sentence is appropriate here due to no property damage being done and lack of intent to intimidate, but this is not a free speech issue. This is "prosecutors being douche bags" issue (still a very serious problem).
I am not in any way saying that property rights should always trump free speech right: California, for example, extends free speech to private spaces open to the public ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Ro... ). I could even tangibly see a case if, e.g., wall of a privately owned building in a busy area has been set aside as a public chalkboard (for any kind of messages), but certain (otherwise protected) speech was excluded.
Defacement of property that isn't yours and to which you've not been granted access, however, isn't exercise of free speech.
I also find it ironic that most of the posters here disagree with ACLU on Citizens United: apparently showing a political film before an election is not free speech, but vandalism is...
I think I do too, but I'm not sure.
However, I just find it silly that many HNers claim to be unequivocally for political speech, when they're clearly willing to restrict certain kinds of political speech. The latter is an understandable position: I have plenty of concerns about money in politics leading to electioneering, I just personally think the cure has potential to be worse the decease. I'm all in favor of campaign finance regulations that do not restrict free speech, but I'll acknowledge that they may be less effective comparatively[1].
In general, I think it's important to acknowledge that there are trade-offs between liberty, safety, and equality and state which trade-offs one is willing to make. Equivocation or wishful thinking just makes one look dishonest ("will you buy my 100,000 node commodity-hardware distributed database that has 0.00001 ms latency, read-committed transaction isolation, and 100% uptime?")
[1] That said I doubt restrictions on speech will fix the problem of rent-seeking by moneyed interests -- it will continue through other channels; however, now these moneyed interests will have another tool at their disposal: politicians' ability to restrict political speech, e.g., MPAA lobbying congress to restrict the ability of ACLU/EFF to oppose parts of the DMCA.
So, the reason why his maximum sentence is 13 years is because, the maximum sentence for a single act of vandalism of damages over $400 (see subsection b) is 1 year in a county jail. He is being charged with 13 counts of vandalism (presumably because they caught him vandalising 13 times).
Now, the Bank of America is claiming that it cost them $6000 to clean up all the vandalism (which is conveniently just over 450 dollars per act).
So, for all the people outraged over 13 years for chalk, keep in mind in california, vandalism charges are based on damages, not the means (which really makes sense). That it stacks up to 13 years is kinda ridiculous, but also pretty logical. It's not like its "oh, you vanadalized once and now you're going to jail for 13 years", its "you vandalized 13 times, and now a judge gets to decide how much cumulative punishment you're going to get".
You can point out all sorts of unfortunate points in how the law, damages, and punishment is structured, but the whole point of the law is to leave room for human discretion. The $400 dollar barrier seems kinda low, and that's really I guess where the issue is... I guess and combined with Bank of America's damages claims.
[1] http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/594.html
Americans need to start protesting, big time, right now!
Things are going down hill, fast.
These are all true.
There is something terribly wrong here, anyway. The fact that he's facing up to 13 years in prison for what amounts to graffiti or very-low-level harassment (the article made no mention of threats, e.g.) is a very bad sign.
When the government, or private interests directing the government, can threaten a dissenter with a decade or more in squalid[1], overcrowded[2], deadly[3] prisons for minor nuisances, we are all endangered.
[1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/29/cali-m29.html
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_California#Prison_g...
[3]: http://solitarywatch.com/2013/03/15/california-prison-condit...
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2013/jun/2...
Juries are exposed to carefully controlled subsets of all possible facts. What does this guy's mom do? What kind of cars do the people working at the bank drive? The answers to those questions are true facts but not relevant to the court.
Jury decides facts, jury findings are (generally) not subject to appeal.
It seems to me that what happened is that the argument (which is one of law, not of fact) has already been made in court prior to the trial. The judge has rejected it, and prohibited it from being raised in the trial (and thus, to the jury) as it is immaterial to the questions of fact the jury is to decide.
Of course, if there is a conviction, the judge's rejection of the argument can be challenged as legal error on appeal.
How is it just to charge him with more than one count of vandalism? He may have only written in chalk once if they would have charged him immediately after the first incident.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/20/justice/california-prison-over...
Please do us all a favor and stop linking to it. If the story is real - a credible source will talk about it; find and link to it.