Pat Meehan is thinking of running for governor. And this is as good as any issue to show how tough he is on crime. He leaves no doubt that he is sincerely disgusted with what he sees as a lenient sentence.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed papers on Friday indicating that it planned to appeal the sentence. For more see posting below.
By Pat Meehan
Ex-U.S. Attorney For Eastern District of Pa.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Pennsylvanians listened for cannon fire. The intended target was the state legislature in Harrisburg, where all 253 members of the General Assembly waited with hands cupped over their ears. They heard nothing.
That’s because when U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter sentenced former State Sen. Vince Fumo to only 55 months’ imprisonment, the discharge was too weak to travel much farther than the courthouse steps.
Fumo, once Pennsylvania’s most powerful Democrat, had been convicted of all 137 criminal counts he faced. He had defrauded the state Senate and two nonprofit organizations, and he treated the commonwealth like his fiefdom. And for this, he received four years and seven months.
After the verdict in March, jurors expressed outrage at Fumo’s disregard for spending, as he called it, “OPM,” or “Other People’s Money.” They couldn’t believe that a public servant would think nothing of using state funds to pay staffers to work on his farm or to hire a private investigator to track his ex-girlfriend. It’s a shame the judge didn’t share the jurors’ disgust.
