After hearing the sad news that Aaron Schwartz committed suicide, much of the coverage has focused on how a prosecutor gone wild has contributed to this by cornering him. Despicable as this behavior has been, the real cause for this problem has not been this disgraceful human entity, but the congress of the United States as well as the Supreme Court.
It is the responsibility of the law makers to create laws that cannot abused by a bully, and the responsibility of the law’s guardians to rein them in when necessary. And the law that gave that bully the tools to intimidate Aaron was well known for being ridiculously broad, but is has not been changed. It has been defended by saying that people would not abuse its power, but this is obviously wrong. Just as people will abuse the tax code to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, prosecutors will overreach when given the opportunity by a bad law.
I believe that we simply cannot hope to keep bullies out of the prosecutor office all the time. Instead we should:
-
Allow the Supreme Court to judge on the constitutionality of laws once they have passed, and not years later when a victim of the law finally manages to appeal to the court.
-
Clean up the laws with tighter definitions to reduce their potential for abuse.