Maybe if you don't cause any collateral damage, you might have a low chance of conviction by a jury because the victim is highly non-sympathetic. (I'm not a lawyer. This is NOT LEGAL ADVICE.) That doesn't mean you won't get charged and incur a ton of legal costs if you pursue a jury trial rather than settling.
Always remember that U.S. courts are courts of law, not courts of justice. That's usually a good thing (less left to interpretation), but it does have downsides.
> "Always remember that U.S. courts are courts of law, not courts of justice. That's usually a good thing (less left to interpretation)"
Are they? My impression is that US courts rely heavily on the whims of a jury and the judge, leading to very different outcomes for similar cases. Though often leading to injustice (heavy punishments for poor and/or black people, light punishments for rich and/or white people) rather than justice.
I think their biases would have worse consequences if their goal was following some intuitive gut feeling of justice rather than having a goal of applying the law even when the law is known to be imperfect. That is, the less explicit the rules are, the more wiggle room there is for bias to act.
I'm not so sure, I feel the civil law system followed in continental Europe works much better as it's based on the spirit of the law instead of the exact letter and comma.
Hard to say if this would be a better fit for the US though -- I've no idea if that's causing issues elsewhere in more corrupt societies or not.
Always remember that U.S. courts are courts of law, not courts of justice. That's usually a good thing (less left to interpretation), but it does have downsides.