In the ongoing Aaron Swartz case a misconduct complaint has been filed regarding the state’s absolutely barbaric behavior in its pursuit of nailing Swartz to the wall:
The complaint letter [PDF], which is dated January 28 but was just published this afternoon by The Huffington Post, accuses Heymann of withholding key evidence, as well as abusive behavior related to plea bargaining. The letter was sent to the Office of Professional Responsibility, a part of the Department of Justice tasked with overseeing its lawyers.
Specifically, Peters says that Heymann withheld a key e-mail until after a hearing in which it would have been useful. The e-mail “demonstrated that the Secret Service both had effective control over Mr. Swartz’s electronic devices and knew it needed to obtain a search warrant,” as of January 2011, according to Peters. That contradicted other government testimony about delays in searching Swartz’s devices. Heymann thus violated his “duty of candor to the court,” wrote Peters.
The plea bargaining abuse really lends precedence to the belief that the state was seeking revenge on Aaron Swartz for his perpetration of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) incident. Not only was the state seeking insane charges but they also demanded cage time “>in order to justify those charges. I’m sure this case is going to get more interesting but no result will really matter since Swartz is no longer with us.