Nine Years for Spamming? Supreme Injustice in Virginia
The Virginia Supreme Court last week upheld spammer Jeremy Jaynes’ conviction, the first felony conviction in the U.S. for spamming. The court ruled that Virginia’s anti-spam law doesn’t violate free-speech rights or unconstitutionally interfere with interstate commerce.
The ruling also reaffirmed a sentence that is entirely out of proportion to the crime.
In November 2004, Jaynes was convicted of three counts of violating Virginia’s Anti-Spam Act and received three three-year sentences to be served consecutively.
Yes, Jaynes is a criminal. Yes, he deserves to be punished. But almost a decade in prison? Have the reporters and bloggers covering this case so casually thought for one second about just how long nine years in prison is?
Though prosecutors believed Jaynes sent tens of millions of e-mails per day—and he was considered by Spamhaus to be one of the top-10 spammers in the world—they presented evidence of Jaynes sending just tens of thousands of spam e-mails with fake headers over three 24-hour periods. This is enough to make Jaynes’ actions amount to three class-six felonies in Virginia.
To be fair, there is no doubt he was sending a heck of a lot more spam than what prosecutors offered up in court. While searching Jaynes’ home, police found CDs containing 176 million e-mail addresses and 1.3 billion e-mail user names, according to court records. They also found disks containing 107 million AOL e-mail addresses that had been stolen by a former AOL employee.
He was also selling items of dubious value, such as a “penny stock picker” and a so-called history eraser.
Did I say Jaynes is a criminal? And did I mention he deserves punishment? I just want to make clear here that I’m not holding the man up as a model citizen.
However, his sentence relative to his crimes is over the top. The Federal Trade Commission settles with people like Jaynes by punishing them solely on a financial basis practically every week.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average prison sentence for violent felonies in 2004—the most recent year available—was 92 months. The average prison sentence for property offenses was 45 months.
Jaynes’ sentence amounts to108 months. That’s 16 months longer than the average state prison sentence for violent felonies.
Want to know how long nine years is? Nine years ago, Bill Clinton was president, the World Trade Center towers were still standing and Amazon.com was three years away from turning its first profit.
At the very least, the court should have ordered that Jaynes’ sentences be served concurrently. With time off for good behavior, he’d be out before the end of this decade, more than likely a changed, but hopefully not ruined-beyond-repair man.
And if he started sending fraudulent e-mail again, then it would be time to toss him in prison until his joints creak.
