At a closed-door hearing on Capitol Hill, Department of Justice officials explained the deal they offered Internet activist Aaron Swartz: three months imprisonment if he pleaded guilty to felony charges.

That's far less time than the 35 years they could have charged, but it was still a large threat and possibly contributed to overwhelming stresses that drove Swartz to suicide last month. Swartz was being prosecuted for downloading academic documents through MIT's campus network. He had previously been hunted by federal agents for "liberating" federal court documents, but that investigation didn't result in charges.

While they offered a relatively short sentence, prosecutors were absolutely determined to get a felony plea and some kind of prison time, according to sources cited by The Huffington Post. They wanted those results because they believed it would justify their bringing charges in the first place, according to HuffPo.

The plea deal was offered in the early stages of the prosecution and it would have been structured to allow Swartz's lawyer to still argue to the judge that no prison time would have been appropriate.

The HuffPo report also discloses that Justice Department lawyers believed Swartz's "Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto" justified their bringing of felony charges because it demonstrated his "malicious intent" in massive downloading. The US attorney who authorized the Swartz prosecution, Carmen Ortiz, has been steadfast in maintaining that her office did the right thing.

In the manifesto, Swartz wrote in part: