Genuinely interested how people who narrowly miss jail feel

[Altruist]

Its true most dont really see that far ahead, but still there ought to be people who have had this experience. Im not looking for a sappy reddit tier anecdote but also there ought to be some difference in how they look at things , maybe they just got more hush hush with their dealings or whatnot.  Prison is scary especailly if you arent in Scandinavia or a minor in Japan. For somebody like @Manletmachine who is 21, facing the prospect of years in prison but having the entire trial deemed invalid because the prosecution is dumb as bricks has to elicit something.

how people who say spent 2 weeks inside or say narrowly escaped a longer term sentence feel

these cases barely happen irl. like 1 in 3000. ignore the media reporting about criminal cases or litigations, they absolutely always omit or misinterpret crucial details (whether for sensationalism or, more often, not knowing the law). criminal law is extremely graded when it comes to penalizing, so you won't see guys like manletmachine being between walking free or getting "years in prison". at worst, he's likely gonna look at a suspended sentence, even if he has a criminal record already

those cases of people walking away because of muh procedural mistakes are also just hollywood nonsense. criminal codes always contain provisions that allow state attorneys to fix such mistakes; most of the time, the court is even obligated to warn them of those and instruct them to fix them (i. e., returning the incomplete or unclear indictment to them so that they could add the missing formal requirements or clarify the statement of facts which should give rise to reasonable doubt). also,99% of the time, you ll have a case going through the hands of multiple state attorneys, so there's no real chance they'll make some horrible mistake that would prevent even the judge from warning them about. and then there's legal remedies too