The Kickham Comment - Boston Criminal Attorney Blog

The world lost a brilliant mind a week ago today, when Aaron Swartz, the 26 year-old internet prodigy who at age 14 invented the ubiquitous internet feed RSS, as well as internet company Reddit, took his own life. Swartz was no “average person,” but an internet prodigy and genius who was gifted with the kind of genius rarely found in the world, on the level of a Steve Jobs.

While we may never know the precise reason or reasons that Swartz ended his life, to borrow the term genius here, it doesn’t take any kind of genius to see the causal relationship between Swartz’ suicide and his prosecution – many say persecution – by the Boston office of the U.S. Attorney’s office, headed by Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz. The media and the twitter sphere have been abuzz for seven days now about what has widely been called an overzealous prosecution of Swartz by Ortiz’ office. Despite a blog post written by a George Washington University Law professor which argued that no prosecutorial overreach occurred – which somewhat curiously and conveniently appeared 72 hours after Swartz’s death – the overriding consensus now appears to be that Ortiz’ office was far too aggressive and unyielding against this young man, who tangibly hurt no one.

This conclusion includes the editorial board of The Boston Globe, who wrote on today’s editorial page, “In piling on 13 charges and thereby threatening Swartz with up to 35 years in prison, Ortiz’s office went way, way too far.” Equally disturbing is the fact that Ortiz and her deputy prosecutors were made well aware of Swartz’ vulnerable mental health status – that his genius was tragically co-occupied by depression, and that the stress of this wildly over-charged case was bearing down on him heavily. Boston attorney Andy Good, who was one of three lawyers who at various stages represented Swartz, told the Boston Globe that he warned the deputy prosecutor handling the Swartz case of his client’s vulnerable mental health status. Atty. Good told the Globe’s Kevin Cullen, “The thing that galls me is that I told (Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen) Heymann the kid was a suicide risk,” “His reaction was a standard reaction in that office, not unique to Steve. He said, ‘Fine, we’ll lock him up.”

Surrounding all of the very necessary legal reactions to the scandal surrounding the Massachusetts state drug lab – centrally, the need to ensure that defendants who were convicted through drug samples handled by lab suspect Annie Dookhan receive the necessary legal review of their cases – one glaring omission seems to be occurring.

The trial court system in Massachusetts has for a long time been bursting at the seams with enormous case loads. The civil dockets are extremely busy, and the criminal dockets grow exponentially every year. To try and process these cases in an average workday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, is already a Herculean task that few people outside the court system can appreciate. Now, out of the blue, this drug lab scandal has fallen in the laps of prosecutors, judges, and the Trial Court administrators who manage the courts every day. It’s been estimated that possibly tens of thousands of cases may need to be re-brought before courts in Massachusetts – most of them in the Boston area and eastern Massachusetts – just to review and handle these drug cases, alone. It’s an incredibly burdensome challenge to manage.

As a Dedham, Massachusetts criminal defense attorney, I see it every day in courts across eastern Massachusetts. The Administrative Office of The Trial Court, which is the state agency that manages the day-to-day operations of the state’s trial courts, has assigned special judges to hear the massive amount of these drug cases that require review and possible re-trial.