Jeremy Hammond is the accused Anonymous hacker facing life in prison for hacking Stratfor. Life.
Though the presiding judge’s husband was compromised in the hack, she refuses to recuse herself from the case.
Also, Hammond has released a statement from solitary confinement.
On Thursday morning, the judge overseeing Jeremy Hammond’s trial for his alleged involvement in the famed LulzSec Stratfor hack refused to step down from presiding over the case, despite a reported conflict of interest. Hammond’s attorneys had filed a motion to have Judge Loretta Preska recuse herself from the case after it emerged that her husband had been a Stratfor client with data released by the hack.
The legal system is such that it was up to Preska herself to step down ”” she opted against it, and Hammond will appear in court in April with the judge presiding. The same judge denied the activist bail (he has been held in a Manhattan federal prison for over a year, regularly placed in solitary confinement) and told the defendant that he could face life in jail for his alleged involvement in the hack.
On the same morning Judge Preska announced that she would not be stepping down from the case, Hammond released a statement of his own through his lawyers. The tract decries the criminal justice system’s treatment of cyber activists, condemns government’s persecution of dissent, and above all celebrates the work of the late Aaron Swartz.
Read Hammond’s statement here.
Read the rest of the article here.
