Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-32883774-20180723031702/@comment-17964257-20180723104212

SAO Incident was local, not global.

And I don't have enough Japanese Law knowledge to answer the question extensively, though he'd probably go to prison for life, before the government realized they could use his genius for other tech projects etc.

But again, the assumption of "If he chose to live", goes against his entire motive anyways, so if he chose to live, anything could have happened, but the major difference is, if he was in a state where he could "choose to live", then chances are, he may have not even trapped 10000 players in a death game in the first place.