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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

"...we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. ...his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge"

Little known fact here. When you accept a plea bargain you do not accept a sentence as part of that. Often times you agree to plea to lesser chargers which have a lower maximum penalty but you still run the risk of being sentenced to the max.

There is also the chance the judge will give a longer sentence with enhancements. It's possible you will have not been convicted, tried, or even charged for those enhancements. This has been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. However that doesn't stop judges from doing it anyway. When you are crushed, broke, and in jail what are ya gonna do, sue?

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The plea bargain could have been capped at six months. US Attorneys do this all the time. There is much more that the office can do than just recommend a sentence to the judge. The defense attorneys may not have wanted to run the risk of consecutive sentencing. The probation office could easily have reached the conclusion that the property taken was valued at $5 million based on the FBI affidavit and at that point probation is not permitted under the Guidelines. Supervised release additionally would have prevented any computer use for 2-3 years. The defendant would have gotten low security anyway and that determination is not up to their office or even the sentencing judge--it is a determination made by the US Bureau of Prisons. The statement is misleading in more than one respect.

However in this case there were damages involved to outside parties - which meant they had to agree to any plea bargain if the US attorney wanted to present that to the judge.

See Jonathan Pollard for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard#Sentencing_and...

For some naive reason I never thought someone would get a life sentence for spying on one of their closest allies.

Pollard has been transformed by opportunistic Israeli politicians into some kind of Israeli patriot. He's not. He did it for the money, selling secrets not only to Israel but to Pakistan (!) and South Africa as well.

When you are crushed, broke, and in jail what are ya gonna do, sue?

Sure. You have 24 hours a day of free time, a law library, and nothing to lose.

You are correct. The recommended sentence is not a part of the plea deal. The judge is not bound to accept what the US Attorney's Office recommends.

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