First of all, I did not make an implication that things would be exactly the same without plea bargain. I was merely responding to the completely over the top c

First of all, I did not make an implication that things would be exactly the same without plea bargain. I was merely responding to the completely over the top claim that a plea bargain somehow constitutes "institutionalized torture" that the parent made. That said, I don't think abolishing plea bargain would necessarily lower the maximum penalty for a given felony (which is what the 50 years is). There is a great number of things that come under the name "wire fraud", some of which deserve years in prison and some of which don't. That is why the law gives a range for the possible penalty and it is up to the judge to pick the right number in that range. There is little reason to believe a judge would have opted for the upper bound of the range in this case. The problem I see with plea bargains (from an outside perspective, we don't have plea bargains where I live), is that they allow one to sidestep an honest and public trial in favor of such a bargain, thereby replacing justice by backroom deals. Sometimes this works in the favor of the prosecution, and sometimes the defendant gets of lightly.