By Rusty Brooks
Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has been sentenced to 6 and-a-half years in prison, A.P reported
The sentencing Monday by U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni came after she insisted that the 76-year-old Democrat come to court rather than appear remotely.
In a handwritten letter to the judge, Silver had asked that he be spared a prison term that would cause him to die in prison.
Prosecutors had urged that he go to prison for seven years for his bribery and extortion conviction, AP reported.
A 2015 conviction was overturned on appeal, but Silver was convicted again in 2018. Silver served as assembly speaker from 1994 until 2015, when he resigned after his arrest on federal corruption charges, according to AP
This was one of the biggest NY political stories at the time.
The NY Times reported: “Your honor, I do not want to die in prison,” Mr. Silver, 76, wrote to the judge before the sentencing.
But the judge, Valerie E. Caproni of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said that Mr. Silver had acted out of a sense of greed, and that he was guilty of “corruption, pure and simple.” She added that issuing a sentence that did not include prison time was not appropriate.
“Mr. Silver, his time has come,” the judge said, brushing away a final effort to delay Mr. Silver’s surrender date to prison. “He needs to go to jail.”
She also fined Mr. Silver $1 million.
The ex-speaker of the New York state Assembly Sheldon Silver was found guilty in 2018 of selling his office for $4 million in kickbacks — affirming a 2015 conviction on the same charges that had been overturned on appeal, the NY Post Reported.
As previously reported by The Jewish Voice, close to $5 million was received by Silver in bribes and kickbacks from real estate developers and a cancer researcher in exchange for Silver using his position power in their favor, prosecutors allege. The funds were then laundered in private investment vehicles. According to prosecutors, he accumulated over $2 million in assets and set himself up an annual state pension of $70,000.
Silver’s conviction and 12-year prison sentence from November 2015 was overturned in July of 2017 at Manhattan federal appeals court, and he was set free on bail. The grounds for overturning his conviction cited that jurors must be instructed by the trial judge in a manner that conforms to a recent decision by the Supreme Court in which the public corruption conviction of Virginia Republican former-Governor Bob McDonnell was reversed. The definition of what an “official act” by a politician constitutes was narrowed by the high court ruling, which now makes it harder for convictions to be obtained by prosecutors in many public corruption cases. However, it also said that sufficient evidence was provided by prosecutors to prove money laundering, extortion and honest services fraud, all counts of which Silver had been convicted of, TJV previously reported.
Shortly after, In August of 2017, a formal letter by the government requested that a Manhattan judge set a retrial for this coming March, April or May, citing that a fast retrial would be in the best interest of the public, TJV previously reported.
Fast forward to March of 2018. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan rejected Silver’s lawyer’s appeal to dismiss the charges. 2 years later, the longtime Democrat politician will finally be going to jail
