Are the following sexual assault sentences typical?
(1) Federal criminal jurisdiction is (basically) discretionary. In the vast majority of cases, the US Attorney’s office won’t press federal charges against someone who is also facing state charges for the same overall circumstances/situation. These two cases took place in different times with different federal judicial districts and hence charging decisions were made by different US Attorney offices and (potentially) different policy staffing at the Criminal Division in Washington. (2) These days, probation is a very common sentence for a first misdemeanor conviction, and six months of weekends is at worst a mainstream sentence for a misdemeanor or low-grade first-offense felony. I think that the Times article is a bit sloppy in describing Owen’s convictions. It reads: “convicted in 2005 of sexually assaulting,” but in fact he was probably convicted of a misdemeanor or a very low level felony. Such a short sentence would have been impossible if the actual crime he was convicted of was
