We don't have all the information. In life you never have the information you need to make perfect decisions. But we can ask ourselves if we're OK with the status quo, and if not, try to change it.
To reduce the whole affair to simply "Aaron killed himself." is crude and far from reasonable.
When more information is available, we then adjust (Bayesian interference).
"Blame" is an interesting concept though. In almost any complicated scenario, there is plenty of "blame" to be spread around and you can reasonably argue that multiple different entities are to "blame" for $WHATEVER.
To use a somewhat tangential example... when Ron Paul talked a lot about "blowback" vis-a-vis US policy in the Middle East a few years ago, people said "Ron Paul is blaming America for 9/11". Well, yes... and no. What Ron was saying, in essence, is that there is culpability in multiple places, which is a more nuanced position than "America is good, terrorists are bad, Team America, Fuck Yeah!" OR "We were responsible for 9/11".
So with that in mind... I don't exactly "blame" the prosecutors for Aaron's suicide either. But that doesn't mean I don't think they hold some degree of responsibility, and it doesn't mean I support the status quo, or that I don't want changes made in the law, the sentencing guidelines and the behaviour of prosecutors.
IOW, it's not necessarily the case that either "side" bears 100% of the responsibility for what happened.
Both should be considered fully responsible for anything that happens. I would would not consider "Well he turned his key too!" to reduce blame in any way, they would both be to blame just as much as if the system only required one operator.
Wether this principle of non-zero-sum blame can be applied to situations less obviously engineered is something I can't really support, but it is a point of view that I hold.
It is not about taking perfect decisions, it is about taking the best decision with the information at hand, and if there is not enough information, then I personally would not take a side most of the time (I am only human).
And I say all this while myself taking what you would define as "Aaron's side". I am only debating the philosophical and practical implications of what you said.
He also attacks the obviously political motivation behind the prosecution:
I guarantee you, if Aaron Swartz hadn't killed himself, he'd have been in an Ortiz For Governor campaign commercial one day.That's easily the sort of thing that could be in a political ad. It says not only that she was a good prosecutor, but that she is probably technologically savy as well. I doubt they would bother referring to that particular incident by name (it is often best to be somewhat vague, to keep yourself a hard target to attack).
(This said, I also suspect the politics aspect is more about favors and less about advertising).
It's worth reading over old HN threads on the criminal case. The consensus was pretty close to my position now, which is that prosecutorial discretion worked pretty well in determining the charges. That doesn't make the outcome any less sad; nor does raging at the wrong people.
The original charges or the pile of wire fraud charges added at a later time to make for good press? She used her discretion to add piles of charges on him and then claims she didn't want a long prison sentence. At the very least what she said is inconsistent.
With that said, if this event is something that causes society to carefully evaluate things like outdated computer crime laws and the prosecutorial tactics used in this country than that may be a good thing both for the country as a whole and for his memory.
Once in a while something happens, like someone getting hurt or taking their own life. Then it's no longer about trust, but about accountability and therefore the burden of proof has been reversed. The person with the privileges now needs to convince everyone else that the trust put in them wasn't misplaced. That doesn't mean people involved were responsible for what happened, but it does mean they should be held accountable for whatever shortcut they took.
In this case we need to ask ourselves: Was the pressure and tactics used by the prosecution in line with the alleged crime committed and did the prosecution show enough judgement in regards to the defendants previous mental health issues or even just as a human being?
It's amazing the number of people (myself included) that when talking about this issue have to package what they say in a way to prevent getting pilloried (or downvoted) for their opinions.