[agwa]

> Make no mistake, this means she will always be facing serious opposition should she choose to run for public office.

Beware, given the people's love of tough-on-crime politicians, drawing any attention to her career as a prosecutor, even if negative, might only help her. Most people outside of HN probably see Aaron Swartz as a criminal and this tragedy isn't going to have serious sway. Consider that factually innocent people get convicted because of prosecutorial aggression and there are no public scandals.

The public's attitude towards crime needs to change before naming and shaming prosecutors will be effective. We should try to change it - quote figures to show that people needn't fear being victims of serious crime, appeal to the American founding and the ideals of innocent until proven guilty, make economic arguments that locking people up for disproportionate amounts of time is costly and pointless. This approach will move the needle on the public's attitude and will slowly fix the system which did this to Aaron Swartz. It's more nebulous and less satisfying than trying to destroy the career of a bad prosecutor, but it won't be wasted effort.

[AnthonyMouse]

A huge part of the problem is that there is no lobby for largely innocent people who are stripped of all their assets and locked in prison indefinitely, but there are strong lobbies for "tough on crime": Police unions want more "resources" (i.e. cash in their members' pockets) for crime fighting, especially if the "crime" involves suspects who are very unlikely to harm investigators, like "computer" crimes. Private prisons want more prisoners so that they grow their "business" -- and if they're innocent all the better, because good, honest people are less violent inmates. Victims' groups suffer from "what have you done for me lately" disease, where to get support from their constituencies they need to continually be making it harder for anyone accused to not be convicted and anyone convicted to ever see the light of day again, with no real incentive to care whether those accused and convicted are guilty or innocent.

And, of course, there are no strong "innocent convicts" special interest groups because their constituencies, though numbering in the millions, have no money and can't vote.