I generally agree with your analysis, however you will find that lawyers disagree on the threat assessment. A prosecuting lawyer always says "these are the charges [specific charges] which carry a maximum sentence of [worst possible sentence]" and rarely (and never that I can find for first time convictions) are those maximums given.
The implication in the press, and denied now by Orbitz, is that she told Aaron's lawyer that she was going to ask for, demand even, the maximum sentence. And she has denied that was ever the case. His lawyers can confirm or deny that.
There is more to hear about the intransigence of MIT in their willingness to accept a lesser sentence as well. As with many things, everyone reporting on this has reason to shade the words to advance their point of view, and so it takes a lot of work to be discerning.
Empty words from Carmen Ortiz, and quite Orwellian indeed. Adding 9 felony counts just about proves that the prosecutors were NOT measured in their approach. Whatever MIT's responsibility, it doesn't diminish how wrong the behavior of Ortiz et al was.
Erm, I can see a reasonable case for adding charges, even if you don't intend to ask for the maximum. You can only charge a defendant once for any given crime. You can't bring charges under different theories of guilt if your first attempt fails. So, no matter what sentence you are going for, you want to charge the defendant with all the crimes they could be guilty of. Otherwise, if they evade the largest charge, there is no way to ever punish them at all, even if you could have proven the lesser charges.
There's only one crime, but there are a number of statutes that add all kinds of "add-on crimes", with widely intersecting definitions. Doing just one thing, you can be guilty both in computer fraud, unauthorized access, copyright violation, etc., etc. These are routinely used to a) intimidate the defendants and b) mislead the jury into thinking the defendant is a serious criminal (not one, but 15 charges! he must be guilty of at least something!) and gives strong incentive to "split down the middle" and convict on at least some of the charges. It is a routine trick, which is routinely used by prosecutors, and they know exactly what they are doing. In this case their intimidation has gone further than they intended, but otherwise they are not fooling anyone talking about how they really just wanted a small punishment and always told so to everybody. They bullied Swartz just as they bully everybody.
Analysis on Volokh's blog: http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains... shows the number of the charges probably would not influence the sentence much, but greatly increases chances of conviction and creates serious chance for a long prison term if unsympathetic judge happens to be sentencing.
Prosecutors are supposed to inform defendants of the sentencing guidelines, which are usually quite different from the maximum allowable penalties. I think the office must have done this. Whether that was shaded with "and that's what'll happen" or with "but you're an enemy of the state, and we might just press for the maximum" is directly addressed by this statement, but we've heard more-or-less the opposite from Aaron's counsel. At this point, we have some he-said/she-said, but on the whole, given the contradictions in the statements and actions from the US attorneys, Aaron's counsel seems more credible. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out...
The implication in the press, and denied now by Orbitz, is that she told Aaron's lawyer that she was going to ask for, demand even, the maximum sentence. And she has denied that was ever the case. His lawyers can confirm or deny that.
There is more to hear about the intransigence of MIT in their willingness to accept a lesser sentence as well. As with many things, everyone reporting on this has reason to shade the words to advance their point of view, and so it takes a lot of work to be discerning.