Facing 30 years in prison and $1 million in fines, Swartz’s family felt that he was out of options.
In a statement, the family said:
“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 U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.”
Although not blaming her directly for Swartz’s death, longtime friend Lawrence Lessig suggested that State Attorney Carmen Ortiz was trying to make an example of Swartz with her dogged prosecution.
“From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way,” Lessig wrote on his personal blog. “… [A]nyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.”
Ortiz said in 2011that Swartz was a thief, and had to be brought to justice: “Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars.”
