Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, said Thursday the government's "conduct was appropriate" in its handling of the Aaron Swartz prosecution.

The President Barack Obama appointee's first public comments on the matter come nearly a week after the internet sensation, who was under federal indictment in Massachusetts on hacking and other charges, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment.

Swartz's family, in part, blamed the suicide of the executive director of Demand Progress on what they said was an overzealous prosecution. Prosecutors in Ortiz's office had offered the 26-year-old a six-month prison sentence in exchange for his guilty plea to more than a dozen counts of computer hacking and wire fraud over the illicit downloading of millions of academic articles from a subscription database at MIT. It was a plea agreement Swartz rejected.

"As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office's prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life," Ortiz said. "I must, however, make clear that this office's conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably."

The development came two days after Rep.Zoe Lofgren (D-California) pushed to amend (.pdf) the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, under which some of the charges against Swartz were based. But many legal scholars said the proposal, even if it were law, would not have thwarted the government's case against Swartz, who said his motives were to upload the articles to file-sharing sites to free them for the masses.

Ortiz said it was a generous deal her office offered, and it took into account that Swartz's actions were not financially motivated. She said Swartz would have been confined to a "low security setting."

Here is the rest of the statement by Ortiz:

The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law. As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.

Her comments are not likely to be the last from the government on the topic. The White House must also enter the fray.

A whitehouse.gov petition demanding the President Barack Obama administration remove Ortiz has surpassed 25,000 signatures — meaning the administration is obliged to enter the public debate over whether authorities went too far in prosecuting Swartz, who helped develop the RSS standard and was part of a small team that sold Reddit to Wired parent company Condé Nast.

The administration publicly responds to petitions surpassing 25,000 signatures.

Ortiz was not the line prosecutor in the Swartz matter. It was being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann, who previously won a record 20-year prison term for TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez