Re: Too subtle for me.
Here in deepest South Florida, should a homeowner discover someone at their door trying to get in illegally, said homeowner can, and has on multiple occasions in the past, shoot the miscreant dead, with no consequences beyond having to hire a cleaning service to get rid of the blood once the cops have been around and congratulated him on his aim.
Breaking and entering is liable to have harsh consequences. M'man tried, hard, to break into and enter a county site. You may disagree with the penalties, but you're not the prosecutor.
And, oh, please note that the 440 years is merely totaling the maximum possible sentences. In the first place, no matter what the prosecutor may or may not ask for, the judge might or might not hand down the maximum... and usually doesn't. In the second, most judges make the terms concurrent, so even if m'man got the max for each of the 44 he'd only be inside for the max, or 10. In the third, this is a non-violent first offence, so odds are that he'd just get probation. As the charges have been reduced to misdemeanors, that's a max of 366 days. (That's DAYS, not YEARS.) He'll probably get 'community service' (picking up the trash on the interstate for a few months) and a year of probation. A.k.a. a slap on the wrist.
On the other hand, it's a Federal case in Texas. which means that the judges and prosecutors are insane. back in the 1970s, when 'life' meant '60 years, with a chance at parole in 30' some Federal judges in Texas started handing out 99 year sentences instead of life. When defence attorneys objected, one judge went to 999 year sentences instead. The Mafia boys he was permanently parking into a supermax got some of their friends outside to blow him up (they put a bomb into his car) and his brother, also a Federal judge, requested transfer to Texas and continued the family tradition of 999 year sentences. Feds in Texas still trend towards packing in the years. If m'man had got the wrong judge, he really could have got 440 years in a supermax.
And, oh, yeah, he's not out of the woods yet. If the locals decide that the Feds were too soft, they could find a reason to charge him for something not covered by the Federal charges and haul him up to state courts. Timmy McVeigh was notoriously sentenced to death by the Feds for blowing up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and Oklahoma insisted on trying him separately and handing down their own death sentence just in case he survived the Feds. (He didn't.)
It's a whole new world on this side of the Atlantic. Especially in Texas.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
