And this is why it shouldn't be allowed to represent yourself in criminal court unless you can show you are competent enough to do so. Yes, the guy is an idiot. He probably would have gotten a far lesser sentence had he had a competent lawyer to show mitigating circumstances and prevent him from shooting himself in both feet with a letter like that.
No plain sailing for Anon hacktivist picked up by Disney cruise ship: 10 years in the cooler for hospital DDoS caper
Five months after he was found guilty of orchestrating a distributed denial-of-service attack against US healthcare providers, the self-styled Anonymous hacker Martin Gottesfeld has been sentenced to 121 months in prison. In 2014, Gottesfeld knocked Boston Children's Hospital and the Wayside Youth & Family Support Network …
COMMENTS
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Friday 11th January 2019 10:54 GMT DrXym
Judges always question defendents who say they want to represent themselves and lay out the likely consequences of doing it. Even the US allows people to avail of a public defender if needs be. And even if they represent themselves, the judges tend to give them a little more slack and assistance in making their defence, providing they don't go all sovereign citizen or something equally insane.
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Friday 11th January 2019 11:50 GMT LucreLout
A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client...
Not always. I'm not a lawyer, but I have represented myself twice in civil court and beat the crap out of both companies legal teams (one of which is a FTSE 100). I can't afford to spend money on solicitors & barristers to attend small claims court on my behalf, because their costs are not ordinarily recoverable.
I would agree that representing yourself in criminal court seems unlikely to succeed. If you had incontrovertible evidence of your innocence, your file would probably not have gone to the CPS, the CPS probably wouldn't have approved chargers and brought a case. You're going to need specialist help to ensure you don't fall prey to some legal shennanigans 101 trick.
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Friday 11th January 2019 19:33 GMT Hollerithevo
But a lawyer helps
I had to go to a small claims court when an employer was doing me wrong. I spent an hour with a lawyer to understand what I was up against and how to marshall my evidence and arguments, then went into court with my papers and everything prepared. Took ten minutes to win and get costs. You'd get expert advice on something medical, techie, etc, and it's the same with the law.
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Sunday 13th January 2019 14:17 GMT MonkeyCee
Civil vs criminal
"I have represented myself twice in civil court"
"I would agree that representing yourself in criminal court seems unlikely to succeed."
Can't agree more with both of these statements.
Bear in mind in civil court both parties are equal before the state, so as long as you are prepared for what is happening (which may or may not involve a lawyer), then legal representation is not required. It's also generally only adjudicating over property, which is generally money. Small claims court in particular shouldn't require it, as it would be counter intuitive to it's purpose.
Criminal court is when you can get your rights removed, and this has a need to be thorough. The accused is presumed innocent, and the burden of proof is on the prosecution. A judge may require you to have representation in order to avoid a mistrial, and you'd would indeed be a fool to not have an impartial expert to present your side.
Have a beer for taking companies to small claims. I've been fucked around by larger companies to realise that for some not paying their suppliers until the summons hits is part of their plan. Once it was clear I'd go to court they paid up. As late and as inconvenient as possible, but early enough* that they wouldn't have to pay any share of my costs, since we'd "settled".
* 1645 on the day before the hearing was popular.
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Monday 14th January 2019 18:19 GMT JeffyPoooh
LL boasted about twice not needing a lawyer to "...attend small claims court on my behalf..."
Reportedly, in some jurisdictions, lawyers are explicitly discouraged from attending Small Claims courts. The purpose and intent of the entire Small Claims concept is to minimise costs.
It's easy to win if the facts are on your side.
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Wednesday 16th January 2019 09:45 GMT LucreLout
JeffyPoo confused himself by posting about something he clearly has no experience of.
Facts, while important, are nto what wins a small claims case. Facts can be established by photos and documentation in most cases. Its the interpretation of those facts in relation to the relevant statutory acts and contractual terms that wins or loses the case.
If the facts alone were enough, there'd be no dispute to resolve in court.
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Friday 11th January 2019 12:44 GMT Halfmad
Re: What a hero
Particularly as DDOS can knock of collaborative working on care between institutions and make it harder for clinical information to be transferred from abroad.
We routinely have to send information quickly to the other side of the world as someone has been injured whilst on holiday, it absolutely would impact patient care at that end if they didn't have knowledge of prior treatment.
This is also why the NHS still has faxes, it's not popular but in many cases they are there as a business continuity backup, very much a last resort though.
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Saturday 12th January 2019 21:45 GMT bombastic bob
Re: What a hero
ack, he could've lit flaming dog poo on the doorstep of the doctors who DARED to overstep the civil rights of the teenager and her parents, or organize an irritating demonstration, or something similar [with cameras rolling, etc.] and had more effect without going to jail for it.
It was wrong what EVERYONE did. DDOSing a hospital isn't a "cure".
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Friday 11th January 2019 13:14 GMT xeroks
Handwriting
I'm going to keep a copy of this note and show it to people who disparage my own scrawlish handwriting.
"Here is the handwriting of someone who believes it is morally right to take down hospital IT," I shall say, "Do not trust people who write neatly."
I bet his desk is tidy too (definitely for the next 10 years)
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Friday 11th January 2019 17:38 GMT Jonathan Richards 1
Re: Handwriting
You think that's *neat handwriting*? I thought it was pretty scrappy. I also thought that he wrote "vein attempt" until I saw that a was written much like an e every time. Also, it slopes backward. Do not trust people whose handwriting slopes backward, irrespective of neatness.
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Monday 14th January 2019 08:10 GMT Norman Nescio
Re: Handwriting
You think that's *neat handwriting*? I thought it was pretty scrappy. I also thought that he wrote "vein attempt" until I saw that a was written much like an e every time. Also, it slopes backward. Do not trust people whose handwriting slopes backward, irrespective of neatness.
Just in case anybody takes you seriously, there is no good evidence that graphology is any better then wild guesses.
North Texas Skeptics factsheet on graphology
Note that Forensic analysis of handwriting* to show that two samples were likely written by the same person is different, and does have at least some basis in reality. For example, in the Hitler diaries hoax, the diaries were 'authenticated' in part by several different experts agreeing that the diaries were written by the same person that wrote papers previously authenticated as being written by Hitler. Unfortunately, subsequent forensic analysis of the ink and paper the Hitler diaries were written with showed that they could not have been written by Hitler (the paper contained chemicals first used in paper manufacturing after Hitler's death, and the ink was shown to have been applied to the papers within the previous 12 months), and it turned out that the forger of the Hitler diaries had previously forged the documents used to authenticate the diaries -so the writing matched (HowStuffWorks:Hitler Diaries, HuffPo:More details, ABC:Hitler Diary paper and ink).
NN
*the link is an interesting article, worth a read.
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Sunday 13th January 2019 17:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
> kidnapping pretty despicable imo, especially when practiced by a hospital.
https://mitochondrialdiseasenews.com/2018/01/12/false-child-abuse-charges-trouble-mito-parents/
I'm not sure that Boston Children's Hospital quite went as far as kidnapping, but they did cause a completely innocent child (Pelletier) to be held against her will in a psychiatric ward for 16 months because her parents had the temerity to claim that she might get better care at another centre.
And BCH has form. In a different case, same illness, it required one set of parents to suspend their son's treatment - or they would be charged with child abuse - and only relented when his condition got worse.
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