WASHINGTON — Ex-Rep. William Jefferson, who is painfully aware of “the stain on his honor”, should get a sentence of less than 10 years, not the 27 to 33 years recommended by the prosecution, Jefferson’s lawyer wrote in a motion filed Monday.
“No court has ever imposed a sentence longer than 100 months in a case involving a United States Congressman, even a United States Congressman convicted of bribery after a trial,” Jefferson’s attorney Robert P. Trout wrote just days before Friday’s sentencing in Alexandria, Va.
” In light of all of the facts and circumstances set forth… the defense urges the court to impose a sentence of less than 10 years in this case,” Trout wrote. Jefferson was convicted in the summer of 11 of 16 counts of corruption.
The defense motion was in response to the government’s sentencing memorandum, which called for a harsh sentence of 27 to 33 years in prison, and urged the judge to put Jefferson away immediately after the sentencing, reasoning that the ex-Congressman might flee the country rather than serve his time.
Jefferson’s motion laid out Jefferson’s history in life, starting with his humble beginnings to his rise as a Congressman and his strong religious practice.
Jefferson’s attorney Trout indicated that he would ask that the former politician remain free pending his appeal. If not, he asked the judge to let Jefferson report to prison on a certain date after Christmas so he could spend the holiday with his family.
The motion also noted that Jefferson had suffered plenty already.
“There is no one more painfully aware than Mr. Jefferson that the stain on his honor is permanent and self-inflicted. He suffers in the knowledge that he has brought sorrow and humiliation to his family, and dishonor to the House of Representatives,” the motion said.
“His legacy is not merely tarnished, but it has been obliterated, and worst of all, his personal and professional disgrace has been visited on his children, whose attempts to make their own way in the world will now also require overcoming what the name, fairly or unfairly, has come to represent.”
“This is not to suggest that he has been ‘punished enough.’ But the profound personal fallout from his actions can be considered as one factor in determining what sort of judicial punishment is ‘necessary’ or ‘just’.”
