Aaron Swartz, the late digital rights activist and hacker, did not kill himself because he was depressed, according to his girlfriend.

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman found Swartz dead in their Brooklyn apartment on Jan. 11, and as she explains, she is the person Swartz spent the most time with in the last 20 months of his life — living together, commuting together and working together. And for her, that person she spent so much time with was not showing symptoms of depression, according to an emotional blog post on Tumblr.

At the time of his death, Swartz was facing a potential conviction of 35 years and up to $1 million in fines for allegedly downloading thousands of scholarly articles from the online database JSTOR with a hidden computer connected to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's network. His family and supporters have been repeatedly pointing their finger at overzealous prosecutors to explain his suicide. And Stinebrickner-Kauffman agrees, even if she isn't sure what killed him.

"I don’t know exactly why Aaron killed himself. I don’t know exactly what was going through his mind. If I had known those things on January 11, if I had even known the right questions to ask, maybe I could have stopped him. Since January 11, I think about it every hour of every day. . . I believe Aaron’s death was caused by exhaustion, by fear, and by uncertainty. I believe that Aaron’s death was caused by a persecution and a prosecution that had already wound on for 2 years (what happened to our right to a speedy trial?) and had already drained all of his financial resources. I believe that Aaron’s death was caused by a criminal justice system that prioritizes power over mercy, vengeance over justice; a system that punishes innocent people for trying to prove their innocence instead of accepting plea deals that mark them as criminals in perpetuity; a system where incentives and power structures align for prosecutors to destroy the life of an innovator like Aaron in the pursuit of their own ambitions."

Stinebrickner-Kauffman doesn't believe Aaron was depressed in the first place, as she told The Atlantic Wire. That's why she thinks the sole cause of his suicide was his criminal case.

"If on January 10, Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz at the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office had called Aaron’s lawyer and said they’d realized their mistake and that they were dropping all charges — or even for that matter that they were ready to offer a reasonable plea deal that wouldn’t have marked Aaron as a felon for the rest of his life — would Aaron have killed himself on January 11? The answer is unquestionably no."

At the Aaron Swartz memorial in New York on Jan. 19, a teary-eyed Stinebrickner-Kauffman revealed Swartz had told her he wanted to get married to her just two months before his suicide. Was he or wasn't he depressed when he killed himself? It's hard to know, but Swartz suffered from depression before.

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After Swartz's death, the prosecution has come under scrutiny and not only from his family and supporters. MIT's president appointed a professor to lead an investigation into the school's role in Swartz's case and several lawmakers are demanding answers from the Department of Justice on its handling of the case.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, the leading prosecutor in the case, defended her office's conduct, calling it appropriate and revealing that they never intended to ask for the maximum sentence but just six months of prison.

At the same time, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has been working on reforming the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act, the 1986 law that was being used to bring charges against Swartz.

Image courtesy of Flickr, docsearls