> That’s not how sentencing works. You can’t just add up the counts and get a number. Federal sentencing involves a Byzantine process, starting with the federal sentencing guidelines.
In what way? Deciding the sentence may be complicated, sure; mostly due to the fact that the US system (ideally) wants to be lenient on first-time or very occasional offenders and strict on habitual offenders. (Which isn't always how it works, sadly, due to judge biases)
However, once you receive your sentence, it's relatively simple. You get a charge or multiple charges with a length of stay and an eligibility for parole condition. It then gets marked "concurrent" (time in prison, after the sentencing date, for other crimes counts towards its requirements) or "consecutive" (its time needs to be served independent of other charges). From there, you start with all of the consecutive terms lined up in order of severity and the concurrent ones stacked alongside.
There are sometimes other terms for release, but they're usually enumerated pretty well.
That all being to say, your answer doesn't really answer the person who's asking. It's relatively easy to figure out the release date and minimum parole date from that. In fact, both are usually listed clearly on their sentencing documents.
The guidelines are 618 pages long. There are considerations for the person's history, for their pleas, for the # of counts, for the type of crime, for the victim impact, for the felon impact, for the societal impact, for precedent, for the type of intent & hundreds of other things get mixed in to the judgement as well. There's a good reason this will only be complete by March next year.
Yes, again, for deciding the sentencing. OP is complaining about knowing how long he'll be in jail after being sentenced. At which point it's trivial to deduce release date and earliest possible parole.
> This is life in prison, correct? I know he hasn't been sentenced but all counts is easily several life sentences at the federal level.
There is no a sentence yet. Deciding the sentence has yet to happen, so OP's answer to the grandparent is 100% correct: it's foolish to try to calculate the sentence right now, we just have to wait and see.
If anything, you comment goes to reinforce OP's point: you yourself list 3-4 different variables that need to be determined for each charge.
In what way? Deciding the sentence may be complicated, sure; mostly due to the fact that the US system (ideally) wants to be lenient on first-time or very occasional offenders and strict on habitual offenders. (Which isn't always how it works, sadly, due to judge biases)
However, once you receive your sentence, it's relatively simple. You get a charge or multiple charges with a length of stay and an eligibility for parole condition. It then gets marked "concurrent" (time in prison, after the sentencing date, for other crimes counts towards its requirements) or "consecutive" (its time needs to be served independent of other charges). From there, you start with all of the consecutive terms lined up in order of severity and the concurrent ones stacked alongside.
There are sometimes other terms for release, but they're usually enumerated pretty well.
That all being to say, your answer doesn't really answer the person who's asking. It's relatively easy to figure out the release date and minimum parole date from that. In fact, both are usually listed clearly on their sentencing documents.