man bites dog
The media report what will get people to look at ads. That means "man bites dog" gets reported while "dog bites man" does not, even though -- in fact, because -- the latter is thousands of times more common. So yes, they will report anything anomalous, especially if it's likely to trigger outrage; that certainly includes 100-year-plus sentences. Nearly all multi-count convictions result in concurrent sentences, not consecutive. Also, there are numerous ways for most prisoners to get their sentences reduced below what the judge initially orders; it's common to serve no more than half to two-thirds of the original sentence before being released on parole or other early release programmes. Relative to the total number of people who serve time in prison, very few die there.
Pretty much by definition, anything you read about in a US newspaper is anomalous. It's certainly so in Canada, and I have to believe almost everywhere.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
