DON’T PUNISH THE QANON SHAMAN—OR ANYONE—FOR DEMANDING A JURY TRIAL: “‘You were facing 20 years, Mr. Chansley,’ said the judge, telling him he was ‘smart’ for not going to trial. ‘You did the right thing.’ The ‘right’ thing. At first glance, I’d posit most readers wouldn’t think much of that; plea bargains are a core part of the U.S. criminal justice system. Yet in being frank with Chansley, Lamberth laid bare why those ‘bargains’ are raw deals: Had Chansley insisted on his constitutional right to a trial by jury, he would have been staring down more than 16 additional years in prison. That’s not because the government believes such a stratospheric sentence would serve public safety. It’s because prosecutors routinely inflate hypothetical prison sentences and dangle them over defendants in order to bully them out of going to trial, where outcomes are both costly and uncertain. In plainer terms, Chansley could have received almost 6 times a higher sentence solely for exercising his constitutional rights—something the judge here not only acknowledged but celebrated. This is in no way unique to the January 6 defendants.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Compare and contrast: Man who raped four teenagers gets no jail time, judge says: ‘Incarceration isn’t appropriate’.