Patrick Pogan, the former NYPD officer who was caught on tape in 2008 violently shoving a cyclist off his bike, seemingly without provocation, faced up to four years in prison for a felony conviction of filing a false criminal complaint against cyclist Christopher Long. But yesterday Justice Maxwell Wiley (a Pataki appointee) sent a clear message to all those following the high-profile case: Lying cops suffer no consequences. And the "sentence," a "conditional discharge" which set no conditions, was even more lenient than Pogan's lawyer, Stuart London, had recommended.

London recommended community service for his client, and with the help of the Police Benevolent Association, 180 letters were submitted in support of Pogan, who was on the force just over a week before he knocked Long off his bike. It probably also didn't hurt that Pogan's father and grandfather are both retired NYPD officers. As for the letters, this excellent editorial on the Simple Justice blog notes that such letters are typically submitted "in federal cases but quite unusual in state court cases. Federal judges discount this to a large extent. London suggests that it had an impact on Justice Wiley, the theme being that Pogan was just a good kid who wanted to help people." It continues:

He probably was. And lying on behalf of the police is certainly a fine way to help people. So is viciously attacking a cyclist who the cops are told are evil. Helping people is a relative concept, with a different meaning to a rookie NYPD officer than to, say, a non-cop... Was Patrick Pogan the worst cop on the street? Hardly. But what he did was bad. He was caught, and caught hard, breaking a basic condition of the social compact. He wore a badge, carrying the imprimatur of governmental authority, and then used it to lie, to falsely claim that a person engaged in criminal conduct that never happened.

It happens all the time, right? But it's rarely caught so clearly, so obviously, so flagrantly. He lied and got caught. He is precisely what the integrity of the legal system cannot tolerate. He undermines the faith that the legal system absolutely requires to exist. The Big Shove hurt one man, Christopher Long. The lie that went with it hurt all people of New York.

Sorry to disillusion all of you. Before the non-sentence was read, Pogan fought back tears while reading this statement to the judge: "I have spent my entire adult life trying to help people as a volunteer, a coach, and as an NYS EMT. I would ask you to spare me from jail time, because I feel that I have a lot of people in this world that I can still help." And London, his lawyer, told the judge, "The theme that comes through is that he cares for other people, he puts other people ahead of himself. This is an individual whose family, whose life, whose upbringing has been about helping other people." Aw, like that time he helped a poor, confused cyclist off his bike!

"In his own version [Pogan] is blameless," assistant D.A. Ryan Connors told the judge. "It is the New York Police Department who did not teach him not to lie. The entire public of New York County is the victim in this case because the inherent fairness of the judicial system was called into question." After hearing both sides, Justice Wiley ruled, "The defendant doesn't need any further supervision by the court and the verdict is conditional discharge, period." Pogan and his cop family cried and hugged. And outside the courtroom, Pogan's father thanked the judge and blasted Long:

"No father, no parent ever wants to see their son, their daughter, anybody go to jail," said the elder Pogan, a retired NYPD detective. "He’s a young kid. He can start his life again and do what’s right by everybody like he’s always done. There was no malice in his heart that night." And the Daily News reports that Pogan the Elder also took a shot at the $65,000 settlement Long collected from the city "to further his pot-smoking career."

To wash this all down, here's Al Pacino's classic courtroom rant from And Justice For All: