When news articles mention the maximum, especially in headlines, it feels a bit misleading. It seems there's a decent chance there is little or no prison.
https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
True.
> no one is going to plea to the maximum, which in this case is 20 years.
Unlike in some state systems, federal plea deals do not usually packaged with a sentence. You can plea to a more limited set of charges than initially charged with (or than the Feds were waiving around at you), but you usually don’t “plea to” a particular sentence within the range for the charge you plea guilty to. [0]
The reason the maximum sentence is what is in news articles is that it is a fact. Anything else as to what the sentence will be is speculation, but that the statutory maximum for the charged offenses is the upper limit is an uncontroversial legal boundary.
[0] revised from stronger language, a reply on a separate subthread corrected that; it is possible for federal plea agreements to include a binding sentence terms which the court can only reject by also rejecting the plea agreement. But very often they do not, and the reporting of the statutoriy maximum is in that case correct as the only knowable limit.
A reasonable estimate based on sentencing guidelines isn't super hard for a lawyer to work out, and it'd be far more useful for readers, but it's slightly more work and it makes for significantly less exciting headlines.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sushi-chef-whal...
Lots of things lawyers do are easy for lawyers to figure out. That doesn't mean a programmer is going to be able to make a reasonable estimate unless they both understand the law and the history of the accused.
Sentencing is a fairly well defined things. You have guidelines and upper limits that come with specific charges, and then the judge uses those guidelines and various other factors to then sentence somewhere along that spectrum. Anyone read a handful of sentencing news stories is very well familiar with how it works.
Okay fine. Local man shorts 1 share of IBM and pays a penny to get a call option at $huge. He faces a loss of up to $huge!
That’s literally in the article. I don’t know how this was supposed to make me want a wallet either.
It's fun when you pissed someone with authority off and get on the sh!t list and the local guard kicks an inmate out of their bed and puts them on a floor (they call it a boat but it's just being on the floor) and gives you the bed (the guards can't get violent with you, but they know how to get someone else to). Not every inmate is going to beat you up, but when you are moved from place to place during the month or more transport takes one of the guys who get's kicked out to make room for you is guaranteed to fight over it.
The one you don't think of is that they won't unshackle you to use the bathroom (especially on con-air) so half the guy's backsides are covered in their own excrement because you need your hands to wipe. Good times, good times.
Of all the things you see on TV and in the movies about prison, the worst two are not shown: total mind-numbing boredom, and your cellmate's farts.
It's funny, in Illinois they altered the judge's plea script a couple of years back. They used to say "has anyone made you any promises in regards to this plea?", but now they say "except for the prosecutor, has anyone made any promises.."
It is hard, because if you are innocent you have to make a tough choice. Two weeks after my arrest I was offered a plea to be released the next day. I refused and it took nine and a half years in pretrial custody to actually get my case heard.
If that is the entire content of the article and it has no context to which it is addressed, I think its pointless, but, no, I see no reason in your hypothetical or any obvious extension to see it as disingenuous.
I also don’t see it as particularly usefully analogous to the situation previously being discussed.
Every time I hear stories about someone being wrongfully committed while having nothing to do with the facts I'm super scared.
A person I know who lives in Sicily shared the very same exact name with a local criminal who was often mentioned in tapes and got arrested and jailed for few weeks till it was cleared it was somebody else. It even was a strike of luck the other one was arrested few weeks after him, and you know how it goes in small Sicily villages, everyone knows each other so he also occasionally would find himself in the same places known criminals would hang out, same super markets of bars or restaurants.
Another person I know spent a similar amount of time accused of aggression towards police. He was stopped for drunk driving (which isn't a jailable felony in Italy obviously) and when he was asked to leave the car he leaned on cop's car and they "framed" that as an aggression while the guy simply couldn't keep his balance so he half felt on the cops vehicle. He was cleared thanks to cameras.
I get what you’re saying though. With sentencing, I feel like the maximum sentence is always given, and while dramatic it is very common to see.
All cetaceans are protected by law, morons!. We don't even know how many species of fin whales exist (one was discovered in the Gulf of Mexico in 2023) and you want sushi? Go f*k yourselves popehats!. Thousands of people spent blood, sweat and tears for the last 60 years working really hard for saving them.
If we let it pass unpunished just because "my cultcha" the calling effect will be catastrophic. Deliberately crashing a plane against a natural park is not different. Is a test. If it goes unpunished you are fully giving the castle keys to any criminals trying to make a profit of the same stunt, and they will.
I'm not sure what priors the lawyer would use to guess the expected penalty for something as unprecedented as "Crashed a plane on purpose for YouTube likes."
Perhaps the maximum sentence is preferable for the news outlet because it's a number that's definitely not wrong?
There is a right to a speedy trial, which in Illinois is 120 days once you demand it. Sadly the reality is that it is very hard to get that clock ticking if you are trying to prepare for trial, or waiting on evidence, etc. Also, COVID stopped the clock for two years of that too.
Plus, no-one wants to be in the same box as another man who is taking a shit. And the food is so bad that practically everyone has diarrhea all day every day.