>He was not murdered, he suffered from severe mentally illness.

Maybe having one of the most powerful governments use its might to crush someone and make an example does that to people?

Normal people are scared of a manager, a college professor, or making a presentation; imagine how they'd feel if the U.S Government was on their case specifically.

He was not going to get crushed by the government, he was going to serve a 6 month sentence in a low security facility. This is the sort of sentence one might receive for stealing a car. Are those individuals “crushed” by the government?

My point is that the situation would put anyone's resilience to the test.

Millions of people in the US have served sentences of similar length or longer

Millions of people have cats.

Well, if they knew so much else about him, maybe they should have been aware of his illness and appropriately (ie Justly) addressed the situation rather than making an example of him.

> maybe they should have been aware of his illness and appropriately (ie Justly) addressed the situation rather than making an example of him.

While I don't think Aaron Swartz should've been prosecuted (or at least not charged with everything they did), this statement in general is not the job of the prosecutors. If it were, then many charges would have to be dropped/reduced in the case of people with mental illness (where it's not considered part of the defense proper) or other medically compromised individuals. That's kind of an absurd position to take. If X suffers from clinical depression, but has committed (or is accused of committing) some serious crime, should the charges be reduced or the sentence reduced based on these circumstances? Or should they be charged and considered the same as anyone else would be for the same crimes?

This reeks of the same kind of abuse of prosecution as the affluenza case.

your aside about "defense proper" is kind of the point, but extended to another branch of the justice system (ie policing) . I think we've seen a similar sentiment in 2020 over how many people are unhappy about how the police are going about their jobs.

That aside, in particular, was meant in the sense of: The mental illness can be seen as causal or mitigating. Like, a person suffering from a schizophrenic break could reasonably use that as a defense (not to avoid all treatment/punishment, but as a mitigating factor or to have the consequences moved from prison time to a medical facility) for a crime committed during that break (a sincere belief that they're in danger or that someone was the devil leading them to commit an assault or worse). Depression could similarly be used in a defense like that as depression (in severe cases) can similarly cause breaks with reality or reduced capacity for self-control.

But having severe depression or being schizophrenic, on its own, is not a good justification for changing/reducing charges and consequences (sadly, consequences in the US are punishments as there's little focus on rehabilitation). If anything, it could reasonably affect the sentencing to account for the riskier consequences of placing a person with that mental condition into a medium or high security prison or general population, but not the selection of charges by the prosecutor.

I think we're talking past eachother because it seems you're being descriptive of what is, and I'm being more prescriptive about what ought

So your argument is that depressed people should be able to avoid trial altogether? He wasn’t even in custody when he took his own life.

no, just that policing needs to be made a good deal less scary. Also, at least as I understand it peripherally, it can be sufficiently punitive just to lay chargers and force the other person to prove their innocence. This includes lost time from legitimate activities (school/work), lost wealth (lawyers, opportunity cost), and the emotional trauma of fighting a near unlimited resource state versus your own very limited resources to prove they're the ones who are acting unjustly.

It's easy to play down stuff like this without considering the later consequences of having a record..