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I should have been sentenced to prison , but my lawyer convinced the court that I'm innocent

The person who said the sentence is thankful because he is not in prison now , he does not wish to be in prison .

My question is: could we use "should have +pp" to mean that something was to expected but it didn't happen (and we are happy because it didn't happen) ?

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  • I should leave now. I should have left then. The reasons can only be imagined by others if not revealed.
    – Lambie
    Dec 2, 2019 at 18:30
  • Though I am an English learner, I know that we may also be unhappy because something didn't happen. For example: "she should have arrived by now, but she hasn't".
    – Vova
    Jun 14, 2020 at 12:32

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My question is: could we use "should have +pp" to mean that something was to expected but it didn't happen (and we are happy because it didn't happen) ?

Yes, here you are talking about what was expected, but it did not happen. 

He shouldn't have come to work with that flu, but here he is!
Amazon should have accepted the return, but they only offered me a 10% coupon.

Also, I can use the same structure to talk about my expectations:

It shouldn't rain today, there's not a cloud in the sky!

There are other cases

More examples: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/should

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