Ouch. Data entry errors hurt
US courts have a spread sheet that they use to ensure that sentencing is fair. The prosecutors fill in a few fields and the spread sheet spits out a suggested sentence. But apparently there are data entry errors in about 10% of cases – simple stuff, like addition errors, or filling in the wrong field. The defense lawyers didn’t catch the mistakes, which resulted in variances of up to months in the final sentence. Oops.
