
UCLA professor stole missile secrets for China, faces 219 years in prison - rhegart
https://www.newsweek.com/ucla-professor-stole-missile-secrets-china-219-years-prison-espionage-1447286
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greenyoda
Discussion from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20343254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20343254)

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wjmao88
Interesting that the charges include " failed to report income generated by
the scheme on his tax returns."

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pintxo
Certainly not the first one being caught via the tax code [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone#Tax_evasion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone#Tax_evasion)

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sschueller
Why not 1000 years? These numbers are just stupid at this point. Just say life
in prison.

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mraison
From a non-US point of view, it is indeed a very surprising aspect of the US
legal system.

Making jail time linear seems like a strange fit for finite human lives. Are
there many other legal systems in the world that work like this ?

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jfries
Aren't these large numbers just the sum of the maximum jail time for each of
the charges? How are multiple charges handled in other countries?

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mraison
At least in France, this article says that for similar concurrent charges (not
sure how similarity is determined), the most important sentence is picked. So,
max instead of sum.

[https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticl...](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000006417358&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719)

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marcusverus
This seems odd, like buy one get one one free, but for crimes. If you murder a
guy in France, you can burn his house down without additional penalty?

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nikonyrh
I am quite certain you can.

