I follow a bunch of longtime lawyers who have a lot to say about how prosecutions work in practice and it's pretty interesting. Here's what I've learned: 1. Th

I follow a bunch of longtime lawyers who have a lot to say about how prosecutions work in practice and it's pretty interesting. Here's what I've learned: 1. The Federal conviction rate is ~99%. Federal prosecutors don't bring charges when they aren't going to win; 2. Most prosecutions end in plea deals before they get to trial. In fact, the threat of a heavy sentence at trial is used to extract a plea deal because trials are expensive. If every defendant went to trial the entire justice system would collapse; 4. You can never predict what a jury will do or what they will focus on. It's a huge gamble but it favors the prosecution. Juries want to convict, generally; 5. In Federal court, you want to get past the trial phase and into the sentencing phase. That's where the defendant can do a lot to get a lesser sentence. In state court, it's the opposite; 6. Judges and prosecturos are aligned on their goals. Not for prosecution, necessarily. Both don't want to be overturned on appeal; 7. Appeals are a deeply unfair and drawn out process. This can be abused. If you followed the YSL trial at all, you saw the judge essentially coerce testimony and refuse to disclose the details to the defense saying there was a record that would be preserved for an appeal. That judge ultimately got removed from the case but you should know that an appeal is a much higher burden to meet than anything at trial; 8. Prosecutors want a slam dunk case. The best way is to a cooperating witness. The first person to flip, gets the best deal. So Ellison got a sweetheart deal because she immediately flipped besides arguably being the main person responsible for losing billions of dollars. Yes, SBF allowed her access to custodial funds and for that alone he deserves to go to prison. Judges have a lot of discretion with sentencing despite their being sentencing guidelines. It's one area where a judge's biases can really show up when similar defendants can get wildly different sentences for the same crime. 2 years does seem pretty light given the gravity of the fraud, even with being a cooperating witness. Her lawyer is alrgely responsible for that, I would guess by gaming the sentencing process. Still, I imagine there was some belief that she was simply naive or she got caught up in the fraud and wasn't really responsible.