15 months for O'Malley

Pat O'Malley was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison today on an obscenity charge. U.S. District Court Judge David Dowd ordered O'Malley taken into custody immediately after his sentencing -- an unusual move in federal court -- explaining he didn't want to risk O'Malley getting into any physical confrontations.

O'Malley cried several times during his half-hour statement to the court. He admitted to looking at porn on his computer, but denied looking at child porn. He also dwelled on his feud with his ex-wife, Vicki O'Malley, who provided the FBI with some of its evidence against him. O'Malley claimed he began looking at Internet porn after he started dating her, and that they sometimes looked at it together. After the hearing, Vicki O'Malley said she had never viewed porn with him. "I'm not sure that Mr. O'Malley really took full responsibility for what he did," said acting U.S. Attorney Bill Edwards. "He still seems to be trying to lay it off on her."

You can read the Plain Dealer story here and see WKYC's report here.

It's been O'Malley's worst week ever, WCPN host Dan Moulthrop declared when we were talking about the case on the radio yesterday. The prosecutors, arguing for a five-year sentence, described the "depravity and deviance" of O'Malley's huge porn collection, which they said included bestiality and stories about child abuse, in gory detail. (See this previous post.)

When the defense argued O'Malley had suffered a loss to his reputation because of the case, the prosecutors replied that "it appears that this criminal conviction may have done more to confirm defendant’s reputation than to do it harm." Imagine my surprise yesterday when I read their final brief. I've seen my work in court files before, but never as Exhibit A!