[5] After graduating from The Saint Agnes School in 1974,[6] Ortiz earned her B.B.A from Adelphi University in 1978, working in her family's gift shop during her years there.

[6] In the summer of 1980, Ortiz interned in the Public Integrity Section of the United States Department of Justice with Eric Holder, who later became U.S. Attorney General.

[7] She also worked on judicial reform in Guatemala with Harvard professor, former Watergate prosecutor, and former deputy attorney general Philip Heymann.

[1] In 1990, after being appointed by NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, she served on a commission that investigated allegations of sexual harassment against members of the New England Patriots.

[12] In May 2009, Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry recommended Ortiz to President Obama for the vacant United States Attorney position in the District of Massachusetts.

"[15][16] On March 23, 2012, Ortiz's office secured grand jury indictments against former state Probation Commissioner John J. O’Brien and two of his former deputies, Elizabeth Tavares and William Burke III, for their involvement in running a sham hiring system in which friends and family members of legislators and politically connected job seekers were hired over more qualified applicants.

He pleaded not guilty to 48 charges, including 19 counts of murder, extortion, money laundering, obstruction of justice, perjury, narcotics distribution and weapons violations.

[21] Carmen Ortiz led the prosecution of American pharmacist Tarek Mehanna, who was accused of, among other crimes, translating and posting online materials described by prosecutors as Al Qaeda propaganda.

[25] Ortiz was "admonished by a federal appeals court in 2004 for advocating a harsher jail term for a fraud defendant than she had promised him in a plea-bargain agreement.

[32][33] In all, prosecutors charged Swartz with 13 felony counts, despite the fact that both MIT and JSTOR had chosen not to pursue civil litigation; he faced 30 years of imprisonment.

[41] However, the same day, Ortiz's husband, IBM executive Tom Dolan, scolded the Swartz family for issuing a statement criticizing the prosecutors and MIT.

"[42] Esquire writer Charlie Pierce replied, "the glibness with which her husband and her defenders toss off a 'mere' six months in federal prison, low-security or not, is a further indication that something is seriously out of whack with the way our prosecutors think these days.

"[44] Boston's WBUR reported in February 2013 that Ortiz was expected to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's probe into the handling of the Aaron Swartz case.

"[46] In January 2015, two years after Swartz's death, the White House declined to act on the petition to remove Ortiz from office.

Prosecutors contended that, despite the fact that Caswell himself had never been charged with any crime, his property was subject to civil forfeiture as a long-term site of criminal activity.

[48][49][50][51] Caswell was represented by the Institute for Justice, a non-profit libertarian public interest law firm that frequently intervenes in asset forfeiture cases.

[53][54] In a written decision, Dein dismissed the government's forfeiture action, ruling that Caswell, "who was trying to eke out an income from a business located in a drug-infested area that posed great risks to the safety of him and his family, took all reasonable steps to prevent crime.

[63] Another Ortiz prosecution, this time of Tamerlan's friend Khairullozhon Matanov who pleaded guilty rather than face 20 years in prison, has been described as overzealous.

[77] Ortiz has two daughters and is married to IBM executive Thomas J. Dolan; her first husband, Michael Vittorio Morisi, died in 2000.

[79] This decision also came on the heels of the unpopular Swartz prosecution, with other critics describing Ortiz's professional record as marked by a "hands-off leadership style" and "overzealousness.