McIntire, a 19-year-old student at Boston’s University of Massachusetts, appeared in federal court Friday and has been charged with one count of unlawful possession of an unregistered destructive device and one count of malicious damage by fire of any property used in interstate commerce.
News media unfortunately tends to look up the absolute maximum a crime can be sentenced and reports as if that is the default sentencing. It is rare for crimes to be sentenced to the max. If we can get past the screaming about “but this is Trump’s America now!”, the sentencing is still unlikely to be at the max, or at least not maxed out on every count.
I wish the article had shown their work, because from my skim (quick skim, but I’m pretty solid on the DD charge maximum at least) the two charges together have a maximum sentencing of 17 years combined if charged by the federal system. It would have been 13 if the state had charged.