Hundreds of people gathered in New York City on Saturday for a public memorial service honoring Aaron Swartz, the Internet freedom activist who took his own life earlier this month. Swartz was weeks before a trial date for downloading millions of articles provided by the nonprofit research service JSTOR. He was facing 35 years in prison, a penalty supporters called excessively harsh. At the memorial, Aaron Swartz’s partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, called for prosecutors to be held accountable.

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman: “Last Friday, he faced the prospect of yet another three months of uncertainty and ups and downs and being forced by the government to spend every fiber of his being on this damnable, senseless trial, with no guarantee that he could exonerate himself at the end of it. He was so scared and so frustrated and so desperate and, more than anything else, just so weary. I think he just couldn’t take it another day. … Aaron would have loved to have been here, because out of the last week and out of today phoenixes are already rising from his ashes. The best possible legacy for him is for all of us to go out from here today and do everything we can to make the world a better place. A thousand flowers are blooming in his name already. Some of the most important that we’ll be fighting for, David Segal and many others of us are organizing around. The U.S. attorney’s office must be held accountable for its actions.”