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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

You want to read some of Popehat's articles on sentencing guidelines.

Here's one that walks through the process:

https://www.popehat.com/2013/03/26/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-s...

Here's another, more hyperbolic one, showing how a claimed "facing 67 years" turns out to be more like "facing 24 months, and probably less than that":

https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

But the short version is that describing a criminal case as "facing up to 50 years" is like describing a lottery ticket as "worth up to 50 million dollars", and you should probably believe both statements about equally until the sentencing happens (for the criminal case) or the winning numbers are drawn (for the lottery ticket).

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The difference is the price of that lottery ticket isn't $2, it's your remaining life.

As you would expect most don't take that gamble.

Really, I was just wondering if there were any examples of Americans being sentenced to decades in prison for copyright infringement. It sounds like the answer is no (?).

Also, I assume the multiple counts issue also applies to Germany and other countries, so the US penalties aren't necessarily that much worse. (Well, 10 years is much worse than 5 years, but it isn't decades worse.)

The German legal system does not simply do multiples. Assuming everything is judged together at a trial the process is roughly as follows: First it is checked whether everything was done in a single criminal act (which is defined pretty broadly)[1]. In that case, it is just one crime with one maximum. If not, the sentence is usually much less than the sum of single sentences would be (rule of thumb is "offense with maximal punishment + 1/2 sum of the rest" but can be even less). Everything is capped at 15 years unless there was a crime demanding lifelong imprisonment.

If there are seperate trials (even for totally seperate crimes), the sentences are also combined as per above at the later trial (unless the former sentence was already executed).

As far as I know this is not unusual worldwide. Certainly other European countries use a similar system.

[1]: Wikipedia tells me that the US system doesn't ask that question at all. I know absolutely nothing about copyright cases in particular but e.g. starting a filesharing client that distributes many files to many people is still a single criminal act in Germany (civil law is different of course).

It can be 67 years at the whim of the DA. The maximum punishment is very real and they're just itching to use it.

If it was an unbiased roll of the dice that would be one thing, and the average and the distribution would be meaningful. But when it's arbitrary it doesn't matter what anyone else got, only what you'll get. And if you have any complaints about your treatment, etc, you're immediately in the full-penalty group.

It can be 67 years at the whim of the DA.

Everything I've read says the judge is the one who applies the sentencing guidelines. Prosecuting attorneys don't sentence people, as far as I'm aware.

The DA is the one who offers you a plea bargain, or not, and decides how many counts they charge you with. And recommends charges.

But yeah, after that it's all the judge.

So what happens when someone who's actually informed about sentencing guidelines tells a DA they don't believe the whole "if you don't plead you're facing ten million years in prison" thing?

You're the one who thinks you're informed, and that a judge would overrule the DA if they got out of hand, so I suggest you go find out.

I'm pretty much in the camp that the DA would fuck you up and the police and judge would all be in on it. Try telling a cop what the law is, especially if you're right...

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