MAN SENTENCED TO 15 YEARS FOR PLOTTING KIDNAP, MURDER

On Jan. 29, a 65-year-old man was sentenced to 15 years in a New York prison. The man, formerly a high school librarian, was found guilty of conspiring to rape, kidnap and murder women. He had been in custody since he was detained in 2013.

The man was one of four taken into custody in a case in which they were all members of an online forum where they detailed sexual fantasies. One of the men, a police officer, was convicted in 2013 for conspiring to kidnap and torture women. However, the police officer’s conviction was overturned on the grounds that there was no evidence he intended to carry out the acts he described by the same judge who sentenced the ex-librarian. According to that judge, the former librarian was clearly a danger to the community. The man had purchased tools, including a stun gun, and had planned a kidnapping of an undercover FBI agent with another undercover FBI agent.

A third man pleaded guilty to related charges while a fourth man was also convicted at the same time as the former librarian. However, he has not yet faced sentencing.

A person who is facing charges for violent crimes may want to talk to an attorney about how to combat the allegations. How the defense proceeds may depend in part of the quality of the evidence. An attorney may look at the investigation and whether any evidence was obtained illegally. In other cases, eyewitness testimony might be unreliable. If the prosecution’s case appears to be strong, an option might be a plea bargain. This involves the defendant making a deal with the prosecution instead of going to trial. Usually, the defendant pleads guilty to lesser charges in exchange for a lighter sentence.

Source: Reuters, “Ex-NY high school librarian gets 15 years in kidnap-murder plot“, Brendan Pierson, Jan. 29, 2018