Aaron Swartz Lawyers Seek Misconduct Review Against Prosecutor

By Jeralyn, Section Misconduct
Posted on Wed Mar 13, 2013 at 08:47:04 PM EST
Tags: Aaron Swartz (all tags)

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Via Ryan Grim and Ryan Reilly at Huffington Post, Aaron Swartz's lawyers have asked the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to review the conduct of AUSA Stephen Heymann. In their letter to OPR, available here, they allege Heymann withheld evidence and improperly sought to coerce Swartz into a plea deal. From the letter:

First, AUSA Heymann appears to have failed timely to disclose exculpatory evidence relevant to Mr. Swartz's pending motion to suppress. Indeed, evidence suggests AUSA Heymann may have misrepresented to the Court the extent of the federal government's involvement in the investigation into Mr. Swartz's conduct prior to the application for certain search warrants.

Second, AUSA Heymann appears to have abused his discretion when he attempted to coerce Mr. Swartz into foregoing his right to a trial by pleading guilty. Specifically, AUSA Heymann offered Mr. Swartz four to six months in prison for a guilty plea, while threatening to seek over seven years in prison if Mr. Swartz chose to go to trial.

Swartz' lawyers say they are filing the claim on behalf of Aaron's family. [More...]

In January, I wrote about the belatedly provided secret service e-mail that contradicted Heyman's response to the motion to suppress.

Just last week, both sides filed briefs over the prosecutor's disclosure of an email he received in June, 2011 from the Secret Service Agent on the case, that he claimed to have somehow "overlooked" and was turning over now. The e-mail directly contradicted what the Government had previously told the court on a suppression issue.

Aaron was seeking to suppress evidence seized from his laptop, hard drive and a usb drive, which state police had seized without a warrant. One of the issues was the delay in seeking a search warrant. The feds didn't seek a search warrant for 34 days. Then they let that warrant expire without executing it, and sought another one, resulting in the search not occurring until 48 days after the computer and drives were seized. The Government was forced to admit that an earlier representation to the Court was not factually accurate.

Heyman had written in his initial response to one of the motions t