[tptacek]

Swartz own lawyer, writing after his death, said he didn't believe Swartz would have received a custodial sentence even if he had gone to trial and lost. The prosecutors were offering him months in custody, against a 6-7 year sentence they believed they could get (implausibly, if you run the guidelines calculation). Nobody has to take the "35 years" thing seriously; nobody involved directly in this case did. Swartz was exactly the kind of nerd who would have memorized the sentencing guidelines just to win arguments on a message board (that's a compliment) and he had extremely good lawyers.

(I'm ambivalent about everything in this case and certainly don't support the prosecutors, but much of what gets written about Swartz's case is misinformation.)