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by agwa 3933 days ago
> IIRC the federal government really doesn't offer plea bargains, right?

Quite the contrary - in 2013, 97% of federal cases that weren't dismissed ended in a plea bargain: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-inn...

> And federal sentencing is pretty rigid, so he probably would have served ~80 years.

No - in fact there's no way the Sentencing Guidelines would have given a sentence anywhere near 80 years: http://popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-ele...