Former New York Assembly Speaker gets 7 years in prison

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
7 minutes ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Sheldon Silver, a former New York Assembly speaker who brokered legislative deals for two decades before criminal charges abruptly ended his career, was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison by a judge who said political corruption in the state “has to stop.”

The punishment, announced by U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni, was five years less than the 12-year sentence she gave to Silver after he was initially convicted in the case in 2015.

She noted that the conviction of the 74-year-old Democrat came in a year in which Joseph Percoco, a once-close aide to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and former New York State Senate leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, were also convicted at corruption trials.

Until 2015, Cuomo, Silver and Skelos made up what was known in Albany as “three men in a room” who every year negotiated the state budget and important legislation behind closed doors.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/f16deb43e02749929ea99501f426e942/Former-New-York-Assembly-Speaker-gets-7-years-in-prison

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. His sentence sounds appropriate to me. Yes, he's old, but what he did stinks to high heaven.

[SergeStorms]

2. The punishment fits the crimes.

Even though he's a Democrat, Silver was everything people dislike about politicians. Every year the state's budget came in late, because in the back rooms and conference rooms with the doors locked, Silver and his cohorts were brokering the best deals they could get to enrich themselves, or to further consolidate their power. Every year the state went without a budget while these crooks hammered out the deals that made a few NY politicians wealthy or more powerful. It was criminal, and I'm glad Silver is going to pay for his crimes, just like I want Donald Trump to pay for his.