US prosecutors say they were going to charge Swartz with 6 months

Nearly five days after the death of Internet freedom online activist, Aaron Swartz, the US prosecutor Carmen Ortiz, who was pursuing the computer hacking case against him, has finally broken her silence.

US Attorney’s office in Massachusetts issued a statement on Aaron Swartz’s death, expressing sympathies for his family and friends in which the prosecutor also defended their case against the Internet activist.

Ortiz has said in her statement that her office was fully aware that Swartz was not motivated by financial gain and thus their stance on his punishment “matched” his crime. US prosecution claims it had put six months of probation in a low security setting as its recommended sentence for Swartz.

She also points out that they did not intend to ask for maximum penalties in the case. Swartz was arrested in July 2011, when indicted by a federal grand jury of wire fraud, computer fraud and other charges related to allegedly stealing millions of academic articles and journals from a digital archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He could have faced up to 35 years in prison under the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

However Swartz’s lawyer Elliot Peters accused the US Attorney office of being over-zealous. He told Huffington Postthat the Massachusetts assistant US attorney Stephen Heymann wanted to prusue Aaron’s case because they were looking for “some juicy looking computer crime cases and Aaron’s case, sadly for Aaron, fit the bill.” Peters has also claimed that Heymann threatened Aaron with longer prison sentences if he didn’t accept the plea deal offers.

This isn’t the first case when Heymann is accused of being ‘overzealous’. According to this Salon article, in 2008 a young hacker named Jonathan James killed himself when he was named as a suspect in a case brought by Stephen Heymann. James also left a saying “I have no faith in the ‘justice’ system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this situation, and this is my only way to regain control.”

[caption id=“attachment_591707” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Aaron Swartz at a Creative Commons event in this 2008 photo. Image from Flickr by Fred Benenson[/caption]

According to the federal indictment, Swartz - who was a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics - used MIT’s computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.

JSTOR did not press charges against Swartz after the digitised copies of the articles were returned, according to media reports at the time.

Aaron’s family has blamed the US prosecution for his death. “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death,” they said in an official statement.

You can view the entire statement by US attorney’s office below.

As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.

I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct - while a violation of the law - did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct - a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek - or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek - maximum penalties under the law.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD

As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.