Pirro 's Sex Offender Record: Insignificant Jail Time
Beleagured Jeanine Pirro, running for New York Attorney General, is catching more flak. This time it is for over-emphasizing her tough stance as a prosecutor in sex offender and pedophile cases. The New York Times reports:
In press releases she issued over six years, Jeanine F. Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney, trumpeted the arrests made in Internet sex stings that her office ran. By the time she left office at the end of 2005, that undercover pedophile operation had snared 111 men, including a Roman Catholic priest, a private-school headmaster, a New York City detective and a former Brooklyn prosecutor.
In her campaign, Pirro has repeatedly referred to her 100% conviction rate in these cases and stressed that the offenders were convicted of felonies that carried up to four years in jail.
While Ms. Pirro's press releases repeatedly pointed out that the crimes were felonies punishable by up to four years in state prison for each count, a review of the cases shows that the overwhelming majority of people received sentences that let them avoid extensive jail time.
That's because so many were plead down to misdemeanors. Prosecutors in neighboring counties actually were more successful in getting jail time for the offenders.
Only eight of the men prosecuted by Ms. Pirro were given outright prison sentences by judges, according to records from the district attorney's office. The rest, 93 percent, received some form of probation.
Pirro's response is to blame the judges. Even if the judges are responsible for the light sentences, that doesn't excuse her over-trumping her record to make it seem like she took 111 pedophiles off the streets.
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