So what I've been hearing from everyone in this thread and elsewhere is more or less Chris is going to get away scott free with little to no consequences whatsoever.
He won't have to register as a sex offender.
He won't have a felony on his record.
He might not even have to spend time in jail after sentencing due to the constant continuances. Nope- it's right back to 14 Branchland court for him to rape or screw his mother again and again- except without the protection of certain whiteknights to save him from the next Bella.
Spending 6 months minimum in jail is not "scot-free" (one T, by the way). Even if the best-case scenario where he just gets time served on February 3rd, that's still 1%-2% of his life spent behind bars. Time is the one thing we can't get back, no matter what we do.
What's more, even if he suffers no more legal repercussions, his life is never going to be the same. There are definitely going to be consequences in his living situation, ones which I definitely would not be looking forward to.
It's why he's gone from bragging about it, to calling it Soul Bonding and then Sould Bonding is not nessisarlly sex - even though he bragged about sex in the first instance, and that's only because he's been feeling just enough discomfort that it's slowly dawning on him that it might be a nono thing he's done, he can't understand why but he's not playing with his toys and games and it's been long enough to start pressing in on him he bay have done bad, but intellectually, emotionally and temporally he can't put the answer that's painfully obvious together, especially after it's been filtered through his brain and mental gymnastics.
This pretty much. Chris' life can be pretty much defined as "It seemed like the right idea at the time.", only form someone working from incredibly bad situational awareness.
Chris doesn't actively wish suffering on the world, he believes that suffering comes from evil decisions. Good decisions are ones that make people happy. Good vs. evil is a very simple and straightforward concept to him. Except Chris is the protagonist of his story, and he can't fathom the concept of other protagonists except in the context of his own story, so stuff that causes happiness for him is good, stuff that causes sadness is evil.
Chris doesn't want to hurt you, he just wants to do good in the world. And good in the world is stuff that creates happiness. For him. Because that's the only way he can understand happiness. He literally cannot understand it in any other way. Chris cannot envision any concept of the world except from his own personal experiences.
I imagine there's also a hard stop based on the charges. You couldn't keep continuing and hold someone in jail for a year if the crime they're accused of committing only has a 180 day maximum sentence, for example.
Pretty much. The statute Chris is charged under has a maximum sentence of ten years, but only if charged as a felony. As a misdemeanor, it carries a maximum sentence of one year. Therefore, unless they charge him with a felony (which requires transferring the case to circuit court), they cannot hold him against his will longer than one year.
He can probably *voluntarily* stay in jail a little longer, but eventually the judge is going to ask wtf is happening and why are we holding someone so long on a charge with a maximum sentence of a year, and tell the prosecution to either put up or shut up.
The defense, knowing they have nowhere to house Chris, and not wanting to up the charge to a felony, will be under extreme pressure to take the best deal they can by this point.
Basically the one year cutoff encourages both sides to shit or get off the pot. They can choose to work together and find a solution that's okay for everyone, or turn it into a staring contest trying to get the other side to blink. Personally I don't think Chris is worth such a contest, and they're probably working together.
Consolvo and Heilberg are probably banging shots of whiskey together going wtf do we do.
