"MIT was never involved in any plea negotiation, and was never asked by either the prosecution or the defense to approve or disapprove any plea agreement"

http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd...

II.B.3, last sentence. Read the whole section for a summary of that event.

Here's more detail, from III.A.2 (top of p. 52):

During the June 21 conversation, the lead prosecutor also told OGC [the MIT Office of General Counsel] that, essentially, his work was done, that the final decision about the prosecution was now in the hands of his supervisors, and that a decision would be made soon. The OGC attorney took the opportunity to suggest that some people at MIT would be likely to view the prosecution negatively. The lead prosecutor replied that he understood the complex dynamics at MIT. He said that he had also been in touch with JSTOR and understood their perspective, and had taken both into account in moving forward with the prosecution and he would let MIT know when the indictment came down. From this, OGC inferred that further presentations of MIT’s opinions were unlikely to have an effect on the prosecution: the views of both potential victims had already been taken into account. JSTOR (at that point) was regarded as the primary victim, and if JSTOR’s view didn’t have an impact, then neither would MIT’s view.

That paints the prosecution in a horrible light. Has anyone gotten further on who applied such pressure? Folks like the Secret Service[1]?

"The heavily redacted documents released today confirm earlier reports that the Secret Service was interested in a “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” that Swartz and others had penned in 2008. In May 2011, a Secret Service agent and a detective from the Cambridge police department interviewed a friend of Swartz and inquired specifically about the political statement."

If you are a hammer, you must smash all nails as hard as possible until they commit suicide? Is that prosecution discretion?

[1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/swartz-foia-release...

It's not clear if there was any pressure. Carmen Ortiz was rumoured to be planning a run at MA governor. She might have thought this case was a good way to get her name in the press.

It did. In all the wrong ways. If she had any political ambitions, she can kiss them goodbye.

I do not view the Abelson report––a document that declares the organization that commissioned and published it largely blameless––as the last word on the matter. Whether or not they were asked has no bearing on whether it would have made an impact, and later statements that it would have made no impact are self-serving speculation.

> They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time.

It's not up to the victim how the perp gets prosecuted. It has absolutely nothing to do with them - it is up to the prosecutor alone.

>It has absolutely nothing to do with them - it is up to the prosecutor alone.

The "absolutely nothing to do with them" is patently false. Prosecutors listens to victims about such things and are influenced by them all the time.

On the other hand, the prosecutor will often take their views into account when deciding how to conduct his activity and, especially, what charges to press, what bargains to offer and what stance to adopt during the trial. Making a stand in court becomes far more difficult when both victims insist that whatever damage was done was easily repaired and of little consequence to their well-being. MIT's ambiguous -- at best -- position in this case fueled a great deal of the moral abuses of the prosecution.

As explained by the director of the Media Lab:

"Apparently a grand jury is meeting to render an indictment on Wednesday and there is really only one more day to provide any input into the process. Since it is a criminal case and the prosecutor needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was unauthorized, I think MIT is in the position to “cast doubt” if it desires."

That's not necessarily true. The victim quite often has a strong say in whether the prosecution presses forward with charges or not. I can't say whether that prerogative would have applied in this case or not though.

The victim almost always does, just by their right to refuse cooperation.

That's not true in CA. Prosecutors have to consult with victims in felony cases before accepting a plea agreement.