Yeah, I invested some time last night into reading back through it. It was spring/summer of 2020 if anyone else wants to go back.
From what I gathered from the (very brief) refresher, the timeline went
1. Russ has a hearing and it appears that a deal is in place (I think).
2. Erika objects. Erika's lawyer wants Erika to give a statement and some other things introduced.
3. Erika's lawyer convinces judge to order psych eval, fails to convince judge to order psychosexual eval (that's stayed).
4. Something happens.
5. Starts to look a like a trial might happen after all.
6. Russ's long-suffering lawyer "looks like his patience was recently tried" and accepts worse deal (with criminal record) as Russ seethes in the corner.
So we thought that it was the psych eval that made Russ suddenly decide to reject the deal and insist on a trial. It seemed his lawyer talked him out of a trial, but not in time to take the original deal. So Russ got an objectively worse deal. This was the consensus of the thread, but I don't think it was ever verified.
IF it wasn't the psych eval, then something else happened. Maybe the prosecutor was sufficiently disturbed by some evidence that Erika's lawyer introduced to cancel the deal. Erika's lawyer did explicitly bring up the, 'Why I'm Making it Legal for Your 18 Year Old Daughter to Get in Bed with a Complete Stranger for Only $500' manifesto. Maybe that did it. That would track with Russ's later claim that it was because he was "trying to legalize brothels," when the reality wasn't the brothels per se, but rather the unbelievably creepy way Russ talked about them that did it.
Also remember that Russ said he fought with his attorney, likely to have a trial. When the no-criminal-record deal went away, it would make sense for him to think he should go for broke and demand a trial to exonerate him. (Well, sense to Russ at least, who still doesn't think he did anything wrong.) He wouldn't see himself as having anything to lose at that point. Unfortunately for us, he had a competent attorney who absolutely would not let him do this, because even I can see it would be a profoundly bad idea.
It looks like we might've been wrong, but I'm okay with that because frankly, he should have gone to jail for that fucking pamphlet alone. I need a shower just thinking about it, lol. And I love that much like his fumbled plea deal, it's objectively worse that he got done for being an unrepentant creep rather than for being too stubborn to have a psych eval done.
Architect of his own misfortune, as always.