Also, if they don't think there's a justification for a longer sentence, surely guarantees could be offered that they won't seek a longer sentence, and this might go some way to reduce the courts concern over the suicide risk.
The 4 to 6 years might just be a tactic to get the extradition since 150 years every where else in the world is considered cruel and unusual punishment.
If the maximum sentence is 150 years, but Biden would settle for keeping him locked up another 4 years (so that he doesn't interfere with the 2024 election), then the naive thing to do would be to grant a 146 year reduction of his sentence, but this could end up with Assange serving a sentence of negative length if the judge hands him a sentence less than the maximum.
More seriously, I wonder if Assange's time spent in prison in the UK fighting extradition to the US (after his punishment for skipping bail was served) will count as time served towards whatever sentence he is given in the US. If so, he may only need to drag out the appeals process for another couple of years and the US will have punished him more through the process of him proving his innocence than the sentence he is being threatened with if guilty.
If you embarrass the US government there is a real risk that a suicide will happen to you.
I think the fact that people just don't like him, justifiably, makes it easy to not care about his case, even though most people can at least agree the legal precedents that may be set are very important.
Standards of care matter even for dislikable people, you could argue they matter even more for them.
They are throwing the book at Assange because some US personnel may have been put at risk for having their names revealed. What about the dead unarmed journalists shot from the air like fish in a barrel?
US neo-parties prioritize party+profit over principle, and the gentle babes run in herd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement_in_the_Un...
https://www.afsc.org/resource/solitary-confinement-facts
Another cruelty of our criminal justice system.
