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This is a plea deal, no one is going to plea to the maximum, which in this case is 20 years. The punishment can also be a fine [1], which may be fitting if the

This is a plea deal, no one is going to plea to the maximum, which in this case is 20 years. The punishment can also be a fine [1], which may be fitting if the goal was profit from a YouTube video. 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. [1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
glonq 3y ago
TBF when internet news articles mention anything, it feels quite misleading :P
- andreygrehov 3y ago
  "If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."
ehsankia 3y ago
But that's what "up to" means. Almost every indictment is reported as "up to X" with X being the maximum. But it's almost never the maximum.
- 542458 3y ago
  I mean, it’s a bit like if I reported “Next-gen Tesla could reach speeds as high as 671 million miles per hour”. But in both cases the reality will fall so far short of the maximum that the maximum’s value is essentially irrelevant.
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago
  Technically correct isn't actually the best kind of correct. "Local Man Shorts One Share of IBM, Faces Up To One Billion Dollars of Loss" is technically correct, in the sense that there's no real upper bound, but it's not useful, and it's actively misleading. 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.
  - ehsankia 3y ago
    Neither your example or the example below with Tesla speed make sense. 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.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    I mean, a short stock is unbounded. A sentence for an individual charge is bounded. 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.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      > I mean, a short stock is unbounded. A sentence for an individual charge is bounded. 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!
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    > A reasonable estimate based on sentencing guidelines isn't super hard for a lawyer to work out 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?
- detrites 3y ago
  So then, leaving it off the headline, and including something like your comment as a hefty qualifier when mentioning it in the article would be a way to present that aspect more honestly and without sensationalising it?
542458 3y ago
Relevant here is Popehat’s “Whale Sushi. Sentence: ELEVENTY MILLION YEARS.” https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
- rippercushions 3y ago
  Popehat nailed it: breathless headlines proclaimed "up to" 67 years in federal prison, he ended up with 2 years of probation. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sushi-chef-whale-meat-20150518-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sushi-chef-whal...
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    The problem for Popehat was that eating sei whales is "apparently non cool"? Seriously? 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.
    - kayfox 3y ago
      Ken White has a informal style of writing with sarcasm, irreverency and jokes that honestly makes it less dry of a read. In no way is he saying eating whales should be allowed.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> This is a plea deal 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.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  I could publish an article saying Elon Musk is going to die. It's incontrovertible, and likely the only fact you can say about his death, given in fact that he's not yet dead and going insofar as to agree that all people will die eventually. Do you think an article saying "Elon Musk is going to die" is not disingenuous?
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Do you think an article saying “Elon Musk is going to die” is not disingenuous? 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.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    I already know Elon Musk is going to die, I didn't know what the maximum sentence this guy faced was though.
  - 3y ago
fauxpause_ 3y ago
The goal does not seem relevant. The goal of a bank robbery is to profit from the bank robbery.
nr2x 3y ago
I don’t know about you but I’d not want to spend one day in federal, or any, prison.
- MBCook 3y ago
  Yeah but I would also never concoct a plane crash video “to make money through a sponsorship with a wallet company.” That’s literally in the article. I don’t know how this was supposed to make me want a wallet either.
- ROTMetro 3y ago
  The worst part is the 'diesel therapy' that is transport to get there: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/08/15/the-federal-prisoner-transit-system-aka-diesel-therapy-is-hell https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/08/15/the-federal-pr... 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.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Prisoner Transport Services is totally inhumane. The sheer number of horror stories I've heard from fellow inmates of their weekslong journeys across the USA in the most rotten conditions imaginable.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Having spent 10 years inside I can promise you that you are right. 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.
paulpauper 3y ago
very very unlikely he gets even 10.
ROTMetro 3y ago
It's funny when you take a plea you have to say you were not coerced into making the plea even though everyone knows that you were threatened with the 'trial tax' of an extremely high maximum sentence in order to pressure you into taking the plea. That's the whole reason for these max sentences. Think of the 'trial tax' as a threat to 'not dare' exercise your right to trial. And then the plea includes taking away your Constitutional right to appeal later. It's like Constitutional rights are malleable (except of course the good old 2a, then those same people are fine with restricting other rights say Constitutional rights can not be violated). Sad that there are euphemism like 'trial tax' 'diesel therapy' for blatant Constitutional rights violations in the USA.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  This. 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.
  - nibbleshifter 3y ago
    So much for the right to a speedy trial. Did you get any recourse for this?
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      No recourse yet, still working on it. Might be zero. 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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

glonq 3y ago

TBF when internet news articles mention anything, it feels quite misleading :P

andreygrehov 3y ago
"If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."

ehsankia 3y ago

But that's what "up to" means. Almost every indictment is reported as "up to X" with X being the maximum. But it's almost never the maximum.

542458 3y ago
I mean, it’s a bit like if I reported “Next-gen Tesla could reach speeds as high as 671 million miles per hour”. But in both cases the reality will fall so far short of the maximum that the maximum’s value is essentially irrelevant.
CobrastanJorji 3y ago
Technically correct isn't actually the best kind of correct. "Local Man Shorts One Share of IBM, Faces Up To One Billion Dollars of Loss" is technically correct, in the sense that there's no real upper bound, but it's not useful, and it's actively misleading. 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.
- ehsankia 3y ago
  Neither your example or the example below with Tesla speed make sense. 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.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I mean, a short stock is unbounded. A sentence for an individual charge is bounded. 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.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > I mean, a short stock is unbounded. A sentence for an individual charge is bounded. 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!
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  > A reasonable estimate based on sentencing guidelines isn't super hard for a lawyer to work out 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?
detrites 3y ago
So then, leaving it off the headline, and including something like your comment as a hefty qualifier when mentioning it in the article would be a way to present that aspect more honestly and without sensationalising it?

542458 3y ago

Relevant here is Popehat’s “Whale Sushi. Sentence: ELEVENTY MILLION YEARS.” https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

rippercushions 3y ago
Popehat nailed it: breathless headlines proclaimed "up to" 67 years in federal prison, he ended up with 2 years of probation. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sushi-chef-whale-meat-20150518-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sushi-chef-whal...
- pvaldes 3y ago
  The problem for Popehat was that eating sei whales is "apparently non cool"? Seriously? 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.
  - kayfox 3y ago
    Ken White has a informal style of writing with sarcasm, irreverency and jokes that honestly makes it less dry of a read. In no way is he saying eating whales should be allowed.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> This is a plea deal 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.

ramraj07 3y ago
I could publish an article saying Elon Musk is going to die. It's incontrovertible, and likely the only fact you can say about his death, given in fact that he's not yet dead and going insofar as to agree that all people will die eventually. Do you think an article saying "Elon Musk is going to die" is not disingenuous?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Do you think an article saying “Elon Musk is going to die” is not disingenuous? 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.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  I already know Elon Musk is going to die, I didn't know what the maximum sentence this guy faced was though.
- 3y ago

fauxpause_ 3y ago

The goal does not seem relevant. The goal of a bank robbery is to profit from the bank robbery.

nr2x 3y ago

I don’t know about you but I’d not want to spend one day in federal, or any, prison.

MBCook 3y ago
Yeah but I would also never concoct a plane crash video “to make money through a sponsorship with a wallet company.” That’s literally in the article. I don’t know how this was supposed to make me want a wallet either.
ROTMetro 3y ago
The worst part is the 'diesel therapy' that is transport to get there: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/08/15/the-federal-prisoner-transit-system-aka-diesel-therapy-is-hell https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/08/15/the-federal-pr... 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.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Prisoner Transport Services is totally inhumane. The sheer number of horror stories I've heard from fellow inmates of their weekslong journeys across the USA in the most rotten conditions imaginable.
qingcharles 3y ago
Having spent 10 years inside I can promise you that you are right. 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.

paulpauper 3y ago

very very unlikely he gets even 10.

ROTMetro 3y ago

It's funny when you take a plea you have to say you were not coerced into making the plea even though everyone knows that you were threatened with the 'trial tax' of an extremely high maximum sentence in order to pressure you into taking the plea. That's the whole reason for these max sentences. Think of the 'trial tax' as a threat to 'not dare' exercise your right to trial. And then the plea includes taking away your Constitutional right to appeal later. It's like Constitutional rights are malleable (except of course the good old 2a, then those same people are fine with restricting other rights say Constitutional rights can not be violated). Sad that there are euphemism like 'trial tax' 'diesel therapy' for blatant Constitutional rights violations in the USA.

qingcharles 3y ago
This. 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.
- nibbleshifter 3y ago
  So much for the right to a speedy trial. Did you get any recourse for this?
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    No recourse yet, still working on it. Might be zero. 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.