Aaron Swartz’s lawyer accuses prosecutor of misconduct
Lawyers will move to unseal evidence against Swartz later this week.
The complaint letter [PDF], which is dated January 28 but was just published this afternoon by The Huffington Post, accuses Heymann of withholding key evidence, as well as abusive behavior related to plea bargaining. The letter was sent to the Office of Professional Responsibility, a part of the Department of Justice tasked with overseeing its lawyers.
Specifically, Peters says that Heymann withheld a key e-mail until after a hearing in which it would have been useful. The e-mail "demonstrated that the Secret Service both had effective control over Mr. Swartz's electronic devices and knew it needed to obtain a search warrant," as of January 2011, according to Peters. That contradicted other government testimony about delays in searching Swartz's devices. Heymann thus violated his "duty of candor to the court," wrote Peters.
The other accusation in the letter regards Heymann's behavior during the plea bargaining over Swartz's case. Heymann "attempted to coerce Swartz into foregoing his right to trial" by offering him a deal where he could get 4-6 months in prison by pleading guilty, while pledging to seek a sentence of more than seven years if Swartz saw the case through trial. "Mr. Swartz, who had no prior record and was only twenty-six years old, naturally felt extreme pressure to waive his rights and accept the plea bargain."
Those numbers are slightly higher than an earlier HuffPo report, which says prosecutors told Congress during a closed-door briefing that they had offered Swartz three months in jail in return for his pleading guilty to a felony.
US Attorney Carmen Ortiz has taken a lot of heat over the Swartz prosecution since the young activist's death, but she has defended her office's prosecution as appropriate.
Swartz's partner challenges MIT investigation
What is likely one of the last memorial services for Swartz took place last night on MIT's campus. During the event, Swartz's partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, expressed deep skepticism about the investigation underway at MIT. She added that his lawyers will be filing a motion this week seeking to unseal the evidence against Aaron and make it public, and that if MIT opposed this move "then we can be quite sure that MIT’s investigation is not proceeding in good faith."Stinebrickner-Kauffman said this about the investigation:
I was hopeful that this investigation might be in the spirit of genuine science, of acknowledging and learning from mistakes. We can never get Aaron back, but MIT can ensure that this kind of injustice and tragedy doesn’t happen again in its community.Stinebrickner-Kauffman said that only if MIT releases a report in a "timely fashion," acknowledges "serious mistakes" by MIT, and holds "specific people and ... structures accountable," will the investigation have been in earnest.
But since then I have become less hopeful. I fear that the investigation will instead be in the spirit of a bureaucracy. I fear it will be the kind of “investigation” that Robert Jackall might have written about: A PR exercise, a whitewash.
...
So here is my challenging question for those of you at this institution who care about its ideals and care about your own moral compasses. Is MIT a scientific enterprise, working to fulfill its mission of bettering the world? Or is MIT a bureaucracy, operating much like for-profit corporations, interested primarily in promoting and protecting itself as an organization?
The Swartz case has continued to get national attention, including a lengthy feature in the March 11 issue of The New Yorker discussing Swartz's causes, depression, and ultimate suicide. Discussion has begun in Congress about reforming the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law under which Swartz was prosecuted.
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