Journalists accurately report the actual sentences given to convicts. That is pretty easy to forget after hours of police aggressive interrogation, when you ar

Journalists accurately report the actual sentences given to convicts. That is pretty easy to forget after hours of police aggressive interrogation, when you are presented with the choice between a quick guilty plea for a few years or a trial with a maximum sentence remaining on the table. You might think that you'll be sitting there in an interrogation room, ready to stare down the cops when they threaten you with decades of jail time; it's a different matter when you are actually under arrest. The tactic works because of human psychology. Being in an interrogation room is terrifying, and people have a natural instinct to try to get out as soon as possible. The police interrogators are trained to extract confessions and play on those instincts and the general fear their subjects experience. The problem is not the press, it is the interrogation and plea bargaining process itself.