> The prosecutor charged him with burglary on the basis that it had the same maximum (25 year) sentence as attempted murder but a much lower burden of proof. N

> The prosecutor charged him with burglary on the basis that it had the same maximum (25 year) sentence as attempted murder but a much lower burden of proof. Not doubting your story, but this seems like a very weird reason to me; there's no reason they couldn't be charged with both, and it's extremely common for juries to return different verdicts for each charge when a defendant is charged with multiple. I'd be interested to see statistics about whether charging someone with murder along with burglary results in fewer convictions for the burglary charge, because it doesn't seem super obvious that it would be the case; I would think that the idea that the jury could "split" the verdict by convicting on the lesser charge if they were having trouble coming to an agreement and the fact that alleging someone is an attempted murderer is a stronger reprimand than just calling them a burglar would at least somewhat act as a counterbalance to the chance that the jury would decide to render a not guilty verdict on the burglary charge because they doubted the story due to the murder charge.