[UPDATE BELOW]
Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik has been sentenced to four years in federal prison. The sentence is significantly longer than what Kerik had hoped for when pleading guilty to lying on his application to be the director of Homeland Security, lying to the feds, tax fraud, and accepting $250,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment, provided by a company accused of having mob ties. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors recommended that Kerik serve 27 to 33 months in prison. But judge Judge Stephen C. Robinson was not bound by that, and he previously warned Kerik that he would sentence the disgraced commissioner to a term that he deemed fit.
And so it went today; the 54-year-old Kerik, who has been under house arrest since pleading guilty, will do a four year bid in federal prison, the AP reports. Still, it's a lot shorter than the 61 year sentence he was eligible for. We'll update later as first-hand reports of the sentencing trickle in, and let you know if Kerik cried like he did when he pleaded guilty.
UPDATE: No word yet on Kerik crying like a baby, but the AP has filed a report from the courtroom, where the disgraced NYPD commissioner apologized and implored Judge Robinson to "allow me to return to my wife and two little girls as soon as possible." But Robinson was unmoved, and said, "The fact that Mr. Kerik would use that event (9/11) for personal gain and aggrandizement is a dark place in the soul for me."
Robinson explained that he went beyond the sentencing guidelines because the guidelines "could not account for certain factors." Kerik was "the chief law enforcement law enforcement officer for the biggest and grandest city this nation has," Robinson said, and committed his crimes "in the process of attempting to become a cabinet level position in the government of the United States." Phew—can you imagine where we'd be if a corrupt, prevaricating, self-serving operator like Kerik had infiltrated the ranks of the Bush administration?!
