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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

In the real world, a prosecutor can only nail a higher-up with the cooperation of the people lower down. Those people only cooperate if they get a lighter sentence. It's too bad, but that's how it is and it plays out every day in criminal courts.

As for Diddy: a real, disinterested DOJ would say, "oh, you can testify against <people more famous than you>? Well, we might be able to cut you a deal."

Of course, if the DOJ is not interested in prosecuting those people, then no deal. If they think Diddy is already important enough and they can't let him slide, then no deal, or at least, a medium-stiff sentence.

Finally, two years in prison is not a picnic. See if you want to do it.

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> Finally, two years in prison is not a picnic. See if you want to do it.

Seriously. I'm shocked how cavalier people are about the lengths of prison sentences. Two years in prison is a LOOONNNNGG time.

I was once detained for an hour in a small room at a border. Being deprived of my freedom, my phone, and any comfort, was fairly devastating.

Two years is very short in the US for serious crimes. The US has more people in prison per capita than any other developed country by a wide, wide, wide margin, largely in part because of the judicial system's willingness to hand down sentences for relatively minor crimes that would be seen as insane in most other countries.

For what she was charged with, two years is probably the bare minimum that was available at sentencing given the constraint of "must serve jail time".

Meanwhile in Germany, the sentence range for human trafficking is 6 months to a max of 5 years. Stealing a child is also max 5 years (if you're not intending to sell it).

The contrast is pretty stark.

Basically every free person in the US can get a 26,000 lb truck or a semi auto rifle in under an hour.

Germany has taken the other approach and implemented policies to make their country closer to a prison with all kind of harsher regulations, then reducing prison time.

There are merits to be found in either approach.

genuinely interesting thought. I haven't decided if it carries any water, but interesting.

Why would harsher penalties be required in a place where individuals have more capability to do harm? That seems to place a lot of faith in a linear efficacy of deterrence

Incapacitation.

After she comes out she can write a book maybe sell movie right etc and she will be ok. Look at Anna Delvey or Jordan Belfort. Maybe she hid some crypto.

But a lighter sentence could, for example, range from no jail time to rates of less than 100 percent of the expected sentence in the case of non-cooperation. The prosecutor's recommendation of no jail time is frankly disappointing. She may not have been the main offender, but she committed the crimes. What would her sentence have been if she did not cooperate (and suppose other did or there was enough evidence anyway)? Fifteen+ years? Two years is not a picnic, but given the alternative, it looks like it is.

The prosecutor didn't recommend no jail time. Ellison's lawyers did.

Also, in addition to jail time, she's going to owe a huge sum of money. The feds are going to have a claim on any money she makes for the rest of her life.

For better or worse (I think a little of both), long max sentences exist in the US criminal justice system to allow rewarding cooperators and to threaten non-cooperators alike.

> Prosecutors did not recommend a specific sentence for Ms. Ellison

It was her lawyers that asked for no jail time. Not the prosecutors.

According to the article I read (CNBC), "The prison term was significantly stiffer than the recommendation by the federal Probation Department that Judge Lewis Kaplan sentence Ellison, who had run the hedge fund Alameda Research, to three years of supervised release, with no time at all behind bars". In the same article, "Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon urged Kaplan for leniency".

It seems to me, as prosecutors and Probation Dept talk to each other, that all, except Kaplan, agreed on no prison time for Ellison.

> The prosecutor's recommendation of no jail time is frankly disappointing

It could have been disingenuous. Maybe they knew the judge wouldn't go for it.

As for her not cooperating: would you rather SBF skate free?

I don't know what the case against SBF would have looked like without her, and I suspect you don't, either.

You suspect well, I do not. Let me ask you another question for which you and I do not know the answer. Since she got 2 years in prison, she was not promised (i.e. she did not sign any binding agreement with the prosecutor, beyond "we will do our best to get you a lenient sentence") not to go to prison. Why then not a sentence of 5, 10, 15 years in prison?

Why not just nail her to the wall after the fact? Is integrity of the prosecutor a valid answer?

In almost any profession, your word is all you have. Welsh on someone, and no one will trust you anymore.

I did not say or believe that the prosecutor lied or they should renege on their word, far from it. I said that if she got two years, it means that the agreement Ellison-DA was not for no prison time in exchange for cooperation.

Thus I asked why two years and not five or ten of whatever time under the expected sentence time in case of no cooperation.

The prosecutor doesn't pick a time, and cant promise it. The judge selects the sentence. This judge thought 2 years was reasonable after the fact, and was not bound to it.

Read who I was replying to (which was not you). They said,

"Is integrity of the prosecutor a valid answer?"

Yes it is.

I don't know how that all plays out, to be perfectly honest.

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