The former speaker of the NYS Assembly, Sheldon Silver is going to jail for 12 years and he must pay back more than $5 million on his corruption conviction.
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Silver, 72, a Democrat who represented Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was convicted in December of doing favors for an asbestos researcher and two real estate companies in return for their help funneling almost $4 million in law firm referral fees to him. The third man, Republican former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (SKEH’-lohs), faces sentencing later this month on his own corruption conviction.
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of more than 14 years while defense attorneys argued for home detention.
The gray-haired, bespectacled Silver was first elected in 1976 and served as speaker for 21 years, becoming the classic Albany insider with the power to control bills and state spending singlehandedly in backroom negotiations.
Dick Dadey, with the reform group Citizens Union, who waited outside the courtroom to hear the sentence, said it’s a fair punishment. In a letter sent last month to the judge, Valerie E. Caproni, he offered an emotional apology, saying that he had “failed the people of NY”.
Silver, once one of the most powerful men in Albany and a dominant force in state politics for decades, was convicted on all seven counts against him for fraud, extortion and money laundering last November.
Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver arrives to court in New York, Tuesday, May 3, 2016.
That’s more than the decade the government had been pulling for.
Cuomo says “justice was served” by Tuesday’s sentencing.
In urging a significant sentence, one of the federal prosecutors, according to media accounts, summed up Silver’s actions: “Just pure greed”. He is to come up with $5.2 million in graft money that he took while immersed in corruption related activities as well as $1.75 million in fines.
United States Attorney Preet Bharara, who brought the case, tweeted the “stiff sentence is a just and fitting end to Sheldon Silver’s long career of corruption”.
Silver’s successor as Assembly Speaker, Carl Heastie, said it is a sign the Assembly is moving on from a low point.
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“The letters clearly and persuasively paint a picture of a talented politician who went above and beyond the call of duty”, Caproni said. Judge Caprioni said she wants Silver’s sentence to deter other politicians, make them stop and think before taking kickbacks or making bribes.
