I would like to see a situation where the max penalty that can be issued by a judge can only exceed a plea offer by 20%.
Once again: 40 years is not in fact a sentence that is available to the judge; the judge would have to discard the sentencing guidelines entirely, and that sentence would fall apart on appeal.
Further, there is simply no relationship between the number "40 years" and the guidelines. It's not like the DOJ is marking up the guideline sentence by X0%. They're instead using a ridiculous process to add the sentences for every count of a crime up, which is simply not how federal sentencing works.
Swartz had the advice of some of the best attorneys in the field during his ordeal. Nobody doubts the stress of a federal prosecution contributed to his death. But nobody familiar with the case believes --- or believes that Swartz believed --- that he was facing a double-digit-years sentence. His own attorney, who advised him to take the case to trial, believed that if convicted on all counts, he might not even get a custodial sentence --- that his worst case would be a felony conviction with a probation sentence.
You can read the sentencing guidelines (they're public) and see why. First offense. Non-remunerative crime. Highly debatable damage. Reluctant, ambivalent victims.
In reality, for a non-remunerative first-time offense, even of this severity, the guidelines suggest low single-digits.