A List of People Who Should Never Be Democratic Nominees For Office
By Teresa Nielsen Hayden does typically invaluable work by noting the public officials responsible for the abusive prosecution of Aaron Swartz:
U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz
Special Agent in Charge Steven D. Ricciardi
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen P. Heymann
Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott L. Garland
Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert C. Haas
The U.S. Secret Service’s Electronic Crimes Task Force
The Cambridge Police Department
The MIT Police Department
Most immediately relevant is Carmen Ortiz, who is apparently considered a candidate to replace Deval Patrick. Obviously, this should be out of the question, even if the only other alternative for the Democratic nomination is “Martha Coakley, tanned, rested, ready, and let’s hope she learned something about campaigning.”
Just days before he hanged himself, Internet activist Aaron Swartz’s hopes for a deal with federal prosecutors fell apart.
Two years ago, the advocate for free information online, who was known to have suffered from depression, allegedly used the computer network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to download nearly five million articles from a fee-charging database of academic journals. To some in the Internet community, it was a Robin Hood-like stunt.
Prosecutors disagreed and threatened to put him in prison for more than three decades.
Mr. Swartz’s lawyer, Elliot Peters, first discussed a possible plea bargain with Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann last fall. In an interview Sunday, he said he was told at the time that Mr. Swartz would need to plead guilty to every count, and the government would insist on prison time.
Mr. Peters said he spoke to Mr. Heymann again last Wednesday in another attempt to find a compromise. The prosecutor, he said, didn’t budge.
…a list of crimes that carry shorter prison sentences than the time Swartz was being threatened with. They include manslaughter, bank robbery, and knowingly spreading HIV.