From a security mindset, you must surely know that if something can happen, then you must consider it. The statistical "expected outcome" of the sentence is irrelevant when it's the variance that's so crushing.

I'll give you that "decades" is an emotional exaggeration the other way. But unless you can bound that maximum at less than three years, then I would still call it "bickering". Anything in that range is life altering, and distinguishing between personality-ending and life-ending isn't particularly meaningful when they have a similar effect on the defendant.