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US President Joe Biden has said that he is considering a request from Australia to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (www.bbc.com)

submitted 7 months ago by tardigrada@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13074556

The country's parliament recently passed a measure - backed by PM Anthony Albanese - calling for the return of Mr Assange to his native Australia.

The US wants to extradite the 52-year-old from the UK on criminal charges over the leaking of military records.

Mr Assange denies the charges, saying the leaks were an act of journalism.

The president was asked about Australia's request on Wednesday and said: "We're considering it."

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[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 points 7 months ago

So roughly a 175 year sentence, at cap.

Sentencing guidelines usually have specific rules for whether sentences would be run concurrently or consecutively. Charges are grouped if:

(a) Counts involve the same victim and the same act or transaction.
(b) Counts involve the same victim and two or more acts or transactions connected by a common criminal objective or constituting part of a common scheme or plan. (c) One of the counts embodies conduct that is treated as a specific offense characteristic in, or Chapter 3 adjustment to, the guideline applicable to another count. (d) Counts use the same guideline and are included for grouping under [subsection §3D1.2].

A group's value is then determined by the most serious count in that group. Then, separate groups are combined in a way that is not as simple as adding the groups together. This United States Sentencing Commission PDF document explains how that combining is done. And this YouTube video explains more about how the severity of each charge is calculated and what that means in terms of time in prison, through the lens of explaining what it would mean if Trump were to be found guilty of all the charges laid on him in relation to the retention of classified documents.

I'm not even going to begin to try to work out how that would be applied here, because I am woefully unqualified. But I doubt it would actually be anywhere near 175 years for Assange even if found guilty on all charges and given the harshest interpretation of the sentencing guidelines.