Aaron Swartz, the co-founder of Reddit.com and co-creator of RSS technology, was found dead on Friday after he hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. His family and friends are speaking out and blame Massachusetts Institute of Technology and federal prosecutors as he was facing charges of up to 35 years in prison if convicted.
"Aaron has been depressed about his case/upcoming trial," Susan Swartz, Swartz's mother, posted on a hacker section of the Ycombinator Web site today. "But we had no idea what he was going through was this painful."
Swartz's uncle, Michael Wolf, told the New York Times that the programmer's body was discovered by his girlfriend inside his home in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn at around 9.30am.
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy," his girlfriend, Taren Stinebricker-Kaufmann wrote. "It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death."
Police told the New York Daily News that the 26-year-old ended his life by hanging himself from a belt in his seventh-floor unit on Sullivan Place. He left no suicide note.
He was arrested in 2011 for allegedly downloading more than four million academic journals with intent to distribute them free of charge through file-sharing sites. Swartz faced a possible sentence of 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
Sample papers Swartz attempted to set free include "John Berryman: The Poetics of Martyrdom" and "Mapping the Niger, 1798-1832: Trust, Testimony and 'Ocular Demonstration' in the Late Enlightenment."
