Reply #36: UP TO 50 years [View All]

[anigbrowl]

Man, every goddam time there's a trial...

Look, ALL criminal statutes basically consist of a description of the crime, and what the maximum and/or minimum sentence for such a crime should be. Otherwise sentencing would be totally random. As well as the statutes, there are also sentencing guidelines to help judges decide what a sentence should be, based on past criminal history, severity of the offense and so on. (these used to be mandatory, leaving judges very little room for discretion; but the Supreme Court overturned that, for which you can thank Antonin Scalia, surprisingly enough).

So any time someone is charged with a crime and pulled into the court, the news is going report the maximum possible sentence they could get. If you get arrested for robbery, and the maximum sentence is 10 years, the papers (and usually the DA) will say you're facing a 10 year sentence. Now maybe you just shoved someone and took a quarter and ran away - not so serious, maybe you'll only actually get 3 months.

The 50 years here is not a 'WTF', it's just the total of the possible sentences for the 4 charges of identity theft, wire fraud, unauthorized access to a computer system and obstruction of justice. Now when the actual sentence comes down from the trial court and is reviewed by the appeal court, then you can 'wtf' if you think it's too heavy. But knowing that criminal law includes sentence terms...c'mon, that's civics 101. Everyone should know that stuff by the time they leave school.

I can't help feeling that if the kid was the offspring of a Republican and had 'hacked' into Joe Biden's personal mailbox, you'd be cheering the idea of a 50 year sentence or demanding he be executed for treason or something.