Attorney General Holder defends prosecution of Web activist Swartz

Attorney General Eric Holder denied that agency officials acted inappropriately in their prosecution of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist and co-creator of Reddit who killed himself earlier this year. During a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Holder said that prosecutors initially offered Swartz a plea deal of three months in prison for allegedly stealing articles from a computer archive, and that they later said they would seek up to six months. The hacking charges carried a maximum penalty of 35 years in prison. "I think that's a good use of prosecutorial discretion to look at the conduct, regardless of what the statutory maximums were and to fashion a sentence that was consistent with what the nature of the conduct was," AG Holder testified, adding that Swartz and his attorneys had rejected the plea offers.

"Does it strike you as odd that the government would indict someone for crimes that would carry penalties of up to 35 years in prison and $1 million fines, and then offer them a three month prison sentence?" Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) asked. AG Holder insisted that the charges themselves are less important than the penalties sought by prosecutors and said several months in prison would have been appropriate based on the crime. But Sen Cornyn worried that such harsh potential penalties could empower prosecutors to "bully" defendants into pleading guilty.

Holder also said that communications would be one of the sectors on which Justice's antitrust division would focus.