Reality Winner released to halfway house

[raison de arizona]

Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who pleaded guilty to mishandling government secrets, is transferred to halfway house

Reality Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor who pleaded guilty to mishandling government secrets about Russian election interference and who has long sought a pardon, has been transferred from federal prison to the custody of a halfway house to serve the rest of her sentence, her lawyer said Monday.

Winner’s transfer came on June 2, and was not part of any commutation or special treatment, but a scheduled shift due to good behavior, said her lawyer Alison Grinter Allen.

While she finishes her sentence, she will likely have the option of home confinement.

“She is in the custody of the halfway house and the halfway house can use home confinement as part of it, but it’s all at the discretion of the halfway house,” her lawyer said. “She has begun the re-entry process.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html

I'm having trouble envisioning her getting a pardon in the current climate.

[Patagoniagirl]

[p0rtia]

I find this to be very satisfying.

One of the anger multipliers of Rich White Men committing crimes with impunity it witnessing the unconscionable sentences being served by those who, by comparison, have done so little wrong.

[Maybenaut]

I find this to be very satisfying.

One of the anger multipliers of Rich White Men committing crimes with impunity it witnessing the unconscionable sentences being served by those who, by comparison, have done so little wrong.

I’m not upset that she’s been released to a halfway house, but would not have been bothered much if she had done every day of her sentence (so long as she was treated like every other prisoner). As I understand it, her sentence was within the guidelines.

I actually think what she did was very, very wrong. In this, she’s no different than Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden. The people entrusted with classified information don’t get to decide for themselves how that information should be disseminated, no matter what their motives are.

Barack Obama only did one thing in his eight years as president that pissed me off, and that was when he commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence. I’d be really pissed if Reality Winner got a pardon.

[Patagoniagirl]

Perhaps history will see it differently, Maybe. As it does with Daniel Ellsberg, who I consider a hero.

[northland10]

I don't have a problem with convictions for them and can definitely understand and basically agree Maybenaut's opinion. Had Nixon's team had not acted like a bunch of creeps, they might not have botched Ellsburg's case. Whether he was morally right to do it is not the job of the law to decide. He knew the consequences of his action and could only hope what he was doing would help, not hurt the cause.

With resistance, rather right or wrong, comes consequences. This one of the issues I have with the Trump supporters. They run around as if, since they felt their insurrection was justified, they should experience no consequences. It doesn't work that way. You don't win by avoiding consequences, you win by changing the hearts and minds of the people who then stand up themselves.

[Maybenaut]

Perhaps history will see it differently, Maybe. As it does with Daniel Ellsberg, who I consider a hero.

Perhaps. I’m conflicted about Ellsberg. I don’t necessarily consider him a hero, but he knew what he was doing would likely result in an indictment and he was prepared to go to prison. That makes him different from Manning and Snowden, IMO.

And he would have gone to prison if (a) the Nixon administration didn’t recess the trial until after the Presidential election (they didn’t want him to testify), and (b) E. Howard Hunt and the other “plumbers” hadn’t so spectacularly violated his rights by breaking into his psychiatrist’s office.

Still. The government has to be able to trust people with its secrets, and if that trust is broken, the government has to put the hammer down. Otherwise, you have low-level people effectively setting policy. And that’s bad, IMO.

[p0rtia]

Paul Manafort. Roger Stone. Joe Arpaio. Epstein before he became dead Epstein. Etc.

And the unindicted: TFG, Kushner, Christie, Barr. Etc.

Giuliani.

I'm not particular to Reality W. There are tens of thousands who should be freed if these schmucks are going to walk. IMO.

Sidenote: I have a friend (a Democrat and a fellow pole worker). She believes that there is no way the Guilianis and Kushners and other rich shits of the world can be truly happy, and that their supposed misery is their punishment. I cannot believe that in the third decade of the 21st century, any human being can think this way. Do you guys still here this?

[AndyinPA]

I heard that just today.

[jcolvin2]

Sidenote: I have a friend (a Democrat and a fellow pole worker). She believes that there is no way the Guilianis and Kushners and other rich shits of the world can be truly happy, and that their supposed misery is their punishment. I cannot believe that in the third decade of the 21st century, any human being can think this way. Do you guys still here this?

It’s a coping strategy for people who don’t want to face the fact that we live in a very unfair world where people often are not fairly rewarded or punished for their conduct.

[p0rtia]

Sidenote: I have a friend (a Democrat and a fellow pole worker). She believes that there is no way the Guilianis and Kushners and other rich shits of the world can be truly happy, and that their supposed misery is their punishment. I cannot believe that in the third decade of the 21st century, any human being can think this way. Do you guys still here this?

It’s a coping strategy for people who don’t want to face the fact that we live in a very unfair world where people often are not fairly rewarded or punished for their conduct.

I buy that. The friend who said it is smart and generous, but works a non-union factory job and makes next to nothing. The other side of her argument is that although she is poor, she is happy, and therefore she is better off than kings.

Which would be fine, except that ...insert specious logic... this somehow absolves the kleptocrat class of wrongdoing, and she is happy to have them continue to rip off the country in whatever unethical/illegal ways they chose.

[raison de arizona]

[andersweinstein]

I never had any special interest in this case, but on a recent visit to NYC I caught a very interesting short play, "Is This a Room". The entire "script" was just the transcript of Reality Winner's recorded FBI interrogation on the day 10 armed male agents showed up at her home with a search warrant as she was returning with groceries, eventually moving her to an unfurnished back room in her house for the interview.

What was dramatically interesting was the tension-ratcheting progression starting from faux friendliness, nervous chitchat and innocent-sounding questions turning into a vise of male power closing inexorably around her within a little over an hour. She wound up arrested that day, denied bond, and has been confined for five years until her recent release, She's now under home confinement with a monitoring device.

Of course another thing it shows is how they coaxed her into giving a "purely voluntary" interview at her home which ended in a confession without ever reading her Miranda rights.

I konw her lawyers did at one time try to have her confession thrown out on the Miranda issue:

In that unfurnished room, Winner sat with her back against the wall, with her two questioners blocking the exit to the room, a door that was nearly shut," the court filing reads.

"Winner was never told she was free to leave, nor was she advised as to her arrest status; indeed, when she specifically asked whether she was under arrest, the agents told her they did not know the answer to that 'yet.'"

The filing says that agents also reminded Winner that law enforcement had obtained a search warrant for her person, "a significant fact that would make any reasonable person believe she was detained."
https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurit ... confession

I wondered what happened with that; I haven't turned up anything indicating it was ever ruled on. I only find the information that at some point she wound up changing her plea to guilty. Perhaps it was not that strong an argument under the circumstances? Or they had enough evidence without the confession? I don't know. But no question she was not Mirandized before confessing.

[bob]

Miranda warnings aren't required; they impact whether a defendant's statements are admissible, however.

Winner pleaded guilty. Unless her guilty plea preserved her right to appeal an adverse ruling on the self-incrimination claim, her plea ended her legal challenge.

[Maybenaut]

I konw her lawyers did at one time try to have her confession thrown out on the Miranda issue:

<snip>

I wondered what happened with that; I haven't turned up anything indicating it was ever ruled on. I only find the information that at some point she wound up changing her plea to guilty. Perhaps it was not that strong an argument under the circumstances? Or they had enough evidence without the confession? I don't know. But no question she was not Mirandized before confessing.

Miranda warnings aren't required; they impact whether a defendant's statements are admissible, however.

Winner pleaded guilty. Unless her guilty plea preserved her right to appeal an adverse ruling on the self-incrimination claim, her plea ended her legal challenge.

As far as I’m aware no court ever has held interrogation in a suspect’s own home amounts to a custodial setting absent handcuffs or a statement that the suspect is under arrest.

And, as bob says, an unconditional guilty plea waives most constitutional rights, including the right to be warned.

I’m not in love with the ham-handed tactics employed by the police in many cases. But nor am I filled with breathless outrage. This sort of thing happens all the time, and it is almost always constitutionally permissible.

[andersweinstein]

Miranda warnings aren't required; they impact whether a defendant's statements are admissible, however.

Winner pleaded guilty. Unless her guilty plea preserved her right to appeal an adverse ruling on the self-incrimination claim, her plea ended her legal challenge.

I understand that. I was curious to understand why, some time after filing a motion on these grounds, they chose to change the plea to guilty, thereby abandoning the challenge before it was ever heard.

ETA: the memo in support of the motion can be found here:
https://theintercept.com/document/2017/ ... -suppress/

[bob]

A question better directed toward Winner or her attorneys.

[Maybenaut]

A successful suppression motion only results in the statement being suppressed; it doesn’t result in the charges being dropped. I think in all likelihood the government could have convicted her without her statement. They needed only to connect the dots from the document provided to The Intercept back to her. I don’t recall the details, but wasn’t there a code printed on the document identifying the printer, and they were able to determine she was the one who printed it? It was something like that.

And the more work the government has to put in preparing for trial, the less favorable the terms of any deal are likely to be. Her counsel likely advised her that this was the most favorable outcome she could expect.

[raison de arizona]

Also, too, she totally owned up and acknowledged she made a mistake at the time. She definitely wasn't fighting anything.

Addressing Chief Judge J. Randall Hall in court on Thursday, Ms. Winner said she took “full responsibility” for the “undeniable mistake I made.” She said she “would like to apologize profusely” for her actions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/us/r ... tence.html

[andersweinstein]

A successful suppression motion only results in the statement being suppressed; it doesn’t result in the charges being dropped. I think in all likelihood the government could have convicted her without her statement. They needed only to connect the dots from the document provided to The Intercept back to her. I don’t recall the details, but wasn’t there a code printed on the document identifying the printer, and they were able to determine she was the one who printed it? It was something like that.

And the more work the government has to put in preparing for trial, the less favorable the terms of any deal are likely to be. Her counsel likely advised her that this was the most favorable outcome she could expect.

Thanks. I wondered if something like that might have been the case.

Just in case you're interested:

As far as I’m aware no court ever has held interrogation in a suspect’s own home amounts to a custodial setting absent handcuffs or a statement that the suspect is under arrest.

The memo did attempt to address that:

While courts have generally been less likely to find that an interrogation in a suspect's home was custodial, many courts, including from the Eleventh Circuit, hold that an in-home interrogation may nonetheless be custodial in nature where a "police-dominated atomosphere" exists.'
[cites 7 cases in note 79 on p 11]
...
In a very similar case, United States v Craighead, 539 F3d 1073 (9th Cir. 2008), the Ninth Circuit determined the suspect was in custody for the purposes of Miranda. This Court should find the same here because the facts even more even more strongly support a finding of custody than they did Craighead.

[Craighead does sound extremely similar from their description.]

Memo: https://theintercept.com/document/2017/ ... -suppress/