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Comment by munchinator | Hacker News Reader

I'm not too familiar with the American system, could someone please explain how after the verdict does the sentencing work? The judge is the one who will now decide the sentence? And how long does that decision take, so when will we know what the consequences of the guilty verdict actually are? (For example, how many years in prison, or not).

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Typically decided by the judge. There is a table of different degrees of crimes that have sentencing guidelines for minimum/maximum sentence.

The judge will choose where on that spectrum the sentence lies.

edit: From Ars Technica

The five charges related to wire fraud and money laundering carry maximum sentences of 20 years each, while the two securities and commodities fraud charges have maximum sentences of five years each.

https://youtu.be/kr8gSdJ_Ggw?t=4m32s

Isn't there also the possibility of concurrent versus consecutive sentencing?

Yes. I intentionally left that out, because I don't know what the guidelines are for that on these charges. The quote I gave just lists the maximum sentence for each charge.

My understanding is that consecutive sentencing is relatively rare and probably won't be applied for run of the mill securities crimes, despite the large quantities of money involved in the fraud.

Oh the other hand Madoff got 150 years, so it's possible.

I think in general that people who defraud individual investors get treated more harshly than people who defraud supposed finanancial professionals who at least might be expected to have a better idea of the risks they were getting into.

Can they be served consecutively or not?

i.e. Is SBF going to spend the rest of his life in jail?

"consecutively" in this context is sort of right. But in practice, the charges group together. So if you get charged with 1000 counts of wire fraud, you don't math out 1000 sentences and then decide which ones are consecutive and which are sequential, you math out one wire fraud sentence and for the 'but how many times did you do it' multiplier, you get an extra hit for being prolific.

The parallel commenter linked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr8gSdJ_Ggw&t=272s , which is a great example. https://popehat.substack.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sen... is another, if text / blogs is a better medium, or the slightly older https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc... from the same author.

As others said, the judge will decide. One of the reasons for the delay is the preparation of the Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) that a parole officer will prepare. There's also time to argue about mitigating and exacerbating factors by the lawyers on both sides.

Thank you! And will SBF remain in jail while awaiting the sentencing?

I don't know, but I very much assume so. He violated his bail already (multiple times) leading to it getting revoked.

The judge also previously said, when asked about whether SBF could remain out of jail during just during his trial after his bail got revoked:

> “Your client in the event of conviction could be looking at a very long sentence. If things begin to look bleak … maybe the time would come when he would seek to flee.”

I don't imagine the judge will give him time to get his affairs in order from outside prison, which is something I understand happens (like it did with Elizabeth Holmes)

> I don't imagine the judge will give him time to get his affairs in order from outside prison, which is something I understand happens (like it did with Elizabeth Holmes)

And look what she did. Evidently had a second/another passport, since she surrendered hers - but was attempting to fly to Mexico on a one-way ticket, with no accommodation planned there.

That's also a decision from the judge, though it's likely. Typically, post-conviction release is harder to get than pre-trial release, so if he's detained pre-trial (which SBF eventually was) it's extremely likely that he'll be detained post-conviction.

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resource...

Sentencing on March 28th. https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/172022864264133049...

Disclaimer: not American either, but it does seem like the judge does it from what I read. Sentencing is 28 March so seems he’ll have quite some time.

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