Re: Jim Bell sentencing delayed

Greg,

What's your take on repeated delay in Jim's sentencing:

1. A squeeze on Jim to finger co-conspirators.

2. Weak case, must use procedure to punish.

3. To let time served be the sentence.

4. Jim was up to something worse now being discovered
(like 5 below).

5. Jim is a secret gov agent, now feet up in Tacoma IRS 
laughing at those who fell for suckerbait, screwball AP 
written by IRS as a sting (a recent book package to Jim was 
returned marked "Not in Jail").

6. The court was hoodwinked by IRS, too, and the AUSA
is preparing an indictment of the stingers and federal defenders
and who knows who else that was in on it.

7. Secret Agent Jim is squealing on his double-crossing
secret agents, cutting a deal with whoever else is double-
crossing whomever. He's going down, they're going down,
we're going down, the whole country's going down; Up the
Revolution!

On Fri, Oct 31, 1997 at 07:01:16AM -0500, John Young wrote:
> Greg,
> 
> What's your take on repeated delay in Jim's sentencing:
> 
> 1. A squeeze on Jim to finger co-conspirators.
> 
> 2. Weak case, must use procedure to punish.
> 
> 3. To let time served be the sentence.
> 
> 4. Jim was up to something worse now being discovered
> (like 5 below).
> 
> 5. Jim is a secret gov agent, now feet up in Tacoma IRS 
> laughing at those who fell for suckerbait, screwball AP 
> written by IRS as a sting (a recent book package to Jim was 
> returned marked "Not in Jail").
> 
> 6. The court was hoodwinked by IRS, too, and the AUSA
> is preparing an indictment of the stingers and federal defenders
> and who knows who else that was in on it.
> 
> 7. Secret Agent Jim is squealing on his double-crossing
> secret agents, cutting a deal with whoever else is double-
> crossing whomever. He's going down, they're going down,
> we're going down, the whole country's going down; Up the
> Revolution!

 8. Jim is in a hospital somewhere.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

At 07:01 AM 10/31/97 -0500, John Young wrote:
>
>Greg,
>
>What's your take on repeated delay in Jim's sentencing:
>

perhaps I'm just low on conspiracy juice this week, but I think that Kent's
suggestion that he's in the hospital is probably the best - his recent
letters/calls to Blanc mentioned a persistent staph infection. If he'd been
released, I expect that the docket would indicate that. (it's possible that
they've got a "phantom docket" which has parallel but different entries ..
but I doubt it.) 

I'm reluctant to wander down the "Is Jim a narc? Is Jim not a narc?" path
because it's too difficult to reach a dependable conclusion with the little
information available .. especially given that the feds may be trying to
make it look like he is, or isn't, or is but appears not to be, or
whatever. Too many people applying too much spin. My occam's razor thinks
he's in the jail ward of the local hospital, explaining why John got his
books back and why the sentencing hasn't happened.

If the feds wanted information from him, they've already got it .. and if
they're going to hold him until he testifies against co-conspirators, it's
going to take a lot longer than a continuation until mid-November. So I
doubt that's the reason for the delay.

And, to answer Tim's question re why he can't be sentenced immediately -
because that's not how it works in federal court. Federal defendants submit
to lengthy interviews with a probation officer, who then draws up a report
which summarizes the defendant's social/political/economic/pharmaceutical
background, lists the defendant's prior history of
education/crime/whatever, and so forth. The judge then imposes a sentence
based on the PSR (presentence report) and the guidelines range, which
creates a relatively narrow range of sentences matching a particular crime.
The idea is that the punishment should both be tailored to the defendant,
and be relatively standard across crimes of similar severity. More re
determinate sentencing at <http://www.ussc.gov>.


--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles@netbox.com         | Export jobs, not crypto.
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | http://www.parrhesia.com

I'm not Greg, but I think the repeated delays in Bell's sentencing have
obvious reasons.


At 5:01 AM -0700 10/31/97, John Young wrote:
>Greg,
>
>What's your take on repeated delay in Jim's sentencing:
>
>1. A squeeze on Jim to finger co-conspirators.

Yep. This seemed apparent when he was remanded to the custody of U.S.
Marshals after his brief trial. Why was he not sentenced that very day, of
the verdict, or the day after? How can holding a person for six or more
months without a sentence possibly by justified, even in Amerika's fucked
up judicial system?

His incarceration is itself the best justification for his ideas.

(The au pair in Cambridge, MA was sentenced the day after the verdict, and
could've been sentenced the day of the verdict had it not been so late at
night. So why does it take six or more months to decide on Bell's sentence?
Because he's a political criminal.)

>2. Weak case, must use procedure to punish.

Weak case or not, he was already found guilty, so this is moot. If the
judge thought the case was so weak that he could not give jail time, then
why would the same judge effectively "give jail time" by the act of
continuance for so many months? It doesn't compute.

>4. Jim was up to something worse now being discovered
>(like 5 below).
>
>5. Jim is a secret gov agent, now feet up in Tacoma IRS
>laughing at those who fell for suckerbait, screwball AP
>written by IRS as a sting (a recent book package to Jim was
>returned marked "Not in Jail").

Probably just a screw-up in processing. I admit that I haven't tried to
contact Bell, or send him books, or visit him.

Bell might have _turned_, a possibility (which I doubt) one must always
consider. But he was almost certainly not an agent all those years he was
doing other things. For one thing, he didn't recruit others into doing the
things he was eventually charged with doing....kind of a non-starter for an
agent provacateur.


I hope that if and when I am ultimately charged, arrested, raided, shot,
declared insane, committed, whatever, that I have the decency to stand my
ground.

I don't know Jim Bell, except through his posts on Cypherpunks, but if the
recent letters reprinted here on the list are really his, he appears to be
a changed, or broken, man. I'd say the real reason for his six-month stay
of sentencing is this:

Real Reason: Psychological pressure, with the prospect of release for time
served held constantly over his head, and the prospect of heavy prison time
also held constantly over his head.

Instead of sentencing him and being done with it, letting Bell then adjust
to what was ahead of him, and probably remaining a supporter of his own
ideas, they instead subject him to the well-known psychological pressure
(even torture) of never telling him what's ahead.

Kafka's "The Trial" comes to mind.

No wonder the people are having their own trials of the criminals in the
judicial system.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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