Bebeto Matthews/AP
Judge Jack Weinstein, here in 2011, had the 30-month sentence he handed down to child porn perv reversed by appeals court.
A Brooklyn federal court judge was wrong to give a child porn perv and admitted molester a slap on the wrist, an appeals court ruled Thursday.
Sympathetic Judge Jack Weinstein handed Corey Reingold a scant 30-month sentence in June 2011 even though the mandatory minimum under the law was five years.
Reingold had pleaded guilty to one count of distributing child pornography for his online activities, which included downloading images of prepubescent boys and girls engaged in sex. The Rockaway Park, Queens man had also copped to molesting an underage relative.
“The government contends that the district court erred in refusing to impose the minimum five-year prison term … on the ground that applying such a punishment to this immature 19-year-old defendant would violated the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause,” a panel of three 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges said in a written opinion.
The panel slapped down Weinstein, sending the case back to Brooklyn after prosecutors appealed the shorter sente
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“We remand this case to the district court with direction that it vacate Reingold’s sentence and resentence him … adhering to the statutorily mandated minimum of five years,” the 2nd Circuit judges ordered.
Reingold actually copped to his crime in 2009 but Weinstein initially refused to accept the plea. The judge instead held two years of hearings that included testimony from experts in child sexual abuse, online child porn and adolescent brain development.
Weinstein even took a field trip to the federal prison in Massachusetts that offers treatment to inmates who are sex offenders.
He finally accepted the plea in May 2011.
In another case, Weinstein reluctantly sentenced a Brooklyn pizza maker — who was raped as a child — to five years in jail for kiddie porn after trying to give the defendant a one-year stint. In that 2011 case as well, the 2nd Circuit reserved the judge and demanded the higher sentence.
dbeekman@nydailynews.com
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=14562
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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