Just look at the smirk on Schwartz's face.  Obviously he never expected to be punished.  He committed suicide not because a year in a country club prison was terribly harsh punishment, but because it was revealed he was not above the law after all.

If anyone in the world was prepared to suffer for his beliefs, that person was not Aaron Schwartz.

As to Swartz he didn't commit any real crime so he never was, or pretended
to be, 'above the law'.

Accessing someone else's computers without permission to obtain the information therein is trespass.  The powerful trespass against the less powerful.  He had mistaken ideas about how powerful he was.