# Advice to Malik Dorsey — Plea Offer Expiring 4:00 p.m. Today Malik, you asked for the real numbers. Here they are, with nothing rounded in a comforting direction. Everything below uses the fixed probabilities and ranges counsel has supplied. I am not predicting where a judge will land inside any range, because no one has given me a distribution for that, and I will not invent one. --- ## 1. The plea: custody range before and after your eight months - **Before credit:** 30 to 42 months. The prosecutor will *recommend* 30, but the recommendation does not bind the judge. The judge may impose any number from 30 to 42, and I cannot tell you which. - **After the mandatory eight-month credit:** **22 to 34 additional months** in custody. So the plea is a bounded outcome: your *worst* case is 34 more months. There is no branch of the plea in which you serve nine years, or five years, or four years. ## 2. Probability of each trial outcome - **Acquittal: 25%** — no sentence, no credit issue (no sentence exists to credit). - **Conviction of lesser theft only: 20%** — range 12 to 18 months; after credit, **4 to 10 more months**. - **Conviction of robbery and the firearm count: 55%** — range 84 to 108 months; after credit, **76 to 100 more months**. ## 3. Expected trial custody, using only the supplied endpoints Applying each probability to the low and high end of each range (no midpoints): **Before credit** - Acquittal: 0.25 × 0 = 0 - Lesser theft: 0.20 × 12 = 2.4 → 0.20 × 18 = 3.6 - Robbery + firearm: 0.55 × 84 = 46.2 → 0.55 × 108 = 59.4 - **Expected trial custody: 48.6 to 63.0 months** **After properly accounting for the eight-month credit** (credit applies only in the two conviction branches — 75% of the time — so the expected credit is 0.75 × 8 = 6.0 months) - Lesser theft: 0.20 × 4 = 0.8 → 0.20 × 10 = 2.0 - Robbery + firearm: 0.55 × 76 = 41.8 → 0.55 × 100 = 55.0 - **Expected additional trial custody: 42.6 to 57.0 months** **The comparison in one line:** plea = 22 to 34 more months, guaranteed to fall in that band. Trial = an expected 42.6 to 57.0 more months. **Even the most favorable end of the trial expectation is worse than the worst end of the plea**, by roughly 8.6 months; the unfavorable end is worse by about 23 months. These expected figures are not sentences anyone will actually serve. Your real trial outcome will be zero, 4–10 months, or 76–100 months. The expected range is a weighted comparison tool, not a forecast. ## 4. The license consequence in each branch Your security-officer license is your livelihood, so treat this as a second sentence: - **Plea (robbery):** three-year suspension after release. **Certain — 100%.** - **Trial, robbery conviction (55%):** three-year suspension after release — identical to the plea. - **Trial, lesser theft only (20%):** six-month suspension. - **Trial, acquittal (25%):** no suspension at all. So: the plea guarantees the three-year suspension. Trial gives you a **45% chance of avoiding the three-year suspension** and a **25% chance of no suspension whatsoever**. This is the only dimension on which trial clearly outperforms the plea, and it is a real, non-trivial advantage. ## 5. The two probabilities you specifically need - **Probability of no robbery conviction: 45%** (25% acquittal + 20% lesser theft only). - **Probability of no incarceration beyond the eight months already served: 25%** — acquittal only. The lesser-theft range starts at 12 months, which is above your credit, so even that "good" conviction branch means **4 to 10 more months** inside plus a six-month license suspension. Conversely, **75% chance of some further custody**, and **55% chance of 76 to 100 additional months.** ## 6. Correcting the "coin flip" framing You said you will not plead if trial is basically a coin flip. Two things about that: **First, the coin is not fair, and it is not the coin you named.** Your chance of walking out free today is 25%, not 50%. The 45% figure is the chance of avoiding a *robbery* conviction, and nearly half of that 45% (the 20% theft branch) still costs you 4–10 more months and a license suspension. **Second, the two sides of the coin are wildly different sizes.** That matters more than the odds: - **What you gain if the 25% branch hits:** you avoid 22–34 months and keep your license. Upside ≈ two to three years and your career. - **What you lose if the 55% branch hits:** 76–100 months instead of 22–34. That is **42 to 66 additional months worse than the plea's worst case**, and 54 to 78 months worse than the plea's best case, with the same three-year license suspension you would have had anyway. You also said you cannot do nine years. Be clear-eyed about this: 108 months *is* nine years, and it is the top of the range in the 55% branch. The bottom of that branch, 84 months, is still seven years — about 76 more months after credit. **Nine years is reachable only through trial. The plea makes it impossible.** If "I cannot do nine years" is a genuine constraint rather than a figure of speech, that fact alone argues for the plea, because trial is the only door through which that outcome can enter. ## 7. The risk difference, stated honestly and without any guarantee - The plea **eliminates** the 55% seven-to-nine-year branch. It does not guarantee 30 months; the judge may impose up to 42, and I cannot promise 30 even though the prosecutor will ask for it. - The plea **locks in** the harm you might otherwise avoid: a robbery conviction and a certain three-year license suspension, including in the 25% of worlds where a jury would have acquitted you. - Trial **preserves** a 25% chance of complete vindication — no sentence, no suspension — and a 45% chance of no robbery conviction. It **purchases** that chance at a 55% risk of an outcome four to six years worse than the worst plea outcome. - Nothing here is a guarantee in either direction. A 25% acquittal chance is a real chance; juries acquit on these facts one time in four. Equally, a 55% risk is more likely than not to happen. The expected-value math informs this choice; it does not command it. You are entitled to be risk-tolerant, and if you are factually innocent, the license and the conviction itself may weigh differently for you than the raw months do for me. ## 8. My recommendation, and the decision that is yours alone **My recommendation is to accept the plea before 4:00 p.m.** The reason is not that the case is unwinnable — a 25% acquittal probability is a serious defense. The reason is the asymmetry: the plea's worst case (34 more months) is better than the trial's *best-case expected* figure (42.6 more months), the most likely single trial outcome is the worst one available (55%), and that outcome carries the same three-year license suspension as the plea plus roughly four to six additional years in custody. The plea also forecloses the one result you told me you cannot accept. **The reason to refuse** — and it is legitimate — is that only trial can leave you with no robbery conviction (45%) and a working license (25% clean, 45% avoiding the three-year suspension), and only trial lets you contest a case built on a driver with an unwritten leniency motive, a build-and-voice identification, lent clothing, and no DNA on the gun. If keeping your career and your name matters to you more than two to three additional years of exposure, refusing the offer is a rational choice, not a mistake. **What I need from you:** I have no authority to accept anything, and I will not. The choice is yours, personally, and I will execute it either way with equal energy. I can ask the prosecutor for a short extension, but I cannot promise one, so plan on the deadline being real. If you tell me to go to trial, we go to trial and I will try it hard. If you tell me to accept, I need your word before 4:00 p.m., and you will need to plead knowingly and voluntarily — meaning you admit the robbery in open court, in your own words, which you have so far denied. If you cannot truthfully do that, tell me now, because a plea you cannot honestly make is not available to you at any price. Tell me which one you want.