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Sheldon Silver Begs for Judicial Mercy; Does Not Want to “Die in Prison”

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Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on Friday pleaded for lenience at his sentencing next week on corruption charges, telling a judge that he is filled with shame and prays he will not die in prison, according to US News.

The 74-year-old Democrat submitted a letter in Manhattan federal court, saying he and his wife “are both crumbling” after he was convicted in May at a retrial on corruption charges. He said he barely sleeps and is hyper-focused on the case.

“I pray I will not die in prison,” he told U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni. He called himself “broken-hearted” that he damaged the trust people have in government.

Prosecutors are trying to get a sentence of 10 years in prison for the former speaker, saying they had proven that Silver “repeatedly corrupted the great power of his office for personal profit and caused incalculable damage to the public trust.”

Silver’s lawyers urged Caproni to hand down under 10 years of imprisonment with plenty of community service to follow. They said Silver’s remorse doesn’t equate to him understanding and apologizing directly for the crimes and damage he committed and caused.

Silver faces sentencing July 27 after a jury concluded he was guilty of earning nearly $4 million illegally by collecting fees from a cancer researcher and real estate developers, US News reports. Prosecutors said Silver earned another $1 million by investing the money.

Silver was sentenced to 12 years in prison after a 2015 conviction at trial until a Supreme Court decision set a precedent, giving Silver a window of opportunity to have his original conviction overturned by a federal appeals court.

First elected in 1976, Silver served as speaker for 21 years, until his arrest in 2015 led him to resign his long-held seat.

“The work that has been the focus of most of my life has become dirty and shameful,” Silver said in his letter. “Everything I ever accomplished has become a joke and a spectacle.” The letter went on to say that he begs “for your mercy so that I can somehow go out into the world again to atone to everyone I have hurt.”

Prosecutors almost never put forth requests for a specific number of years in prison to a judge. In their brief filing with Caproni on Friday, they said Silver should get “substantially in excess” of the 10 years proposed by the court’s probation office and reiterated their 2015 call for him to get more prison time than any member of the institution he led, according to Newsday.

An appendix of recent New York corruption sentences included in the prosecution brief at that time identified Boyland, convicted in Brooklyn federal court of three different corruption schemes, as the highest, Newsday reports.

Silver deserved more, prosecutors said. “There is no explanation for his conduct,” they wrote, “other than greed.”

By: Jordan Bena

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