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!

O'Malley's porn

Federal prosecutors have released their sentencing memo in the Pat O'Malley case, and it's a blockbuster.

The feds want the judge to send O'Malley to prison for five years. They say the porn on O'Malley's computers included bestiality: images of men and women having sex with "dogs, horses, cats, snakes, a pig, a rooster, a mule, a camel, a cow, and a fish."

The memo confirms what I reported last week in my feature on O'Malley: that child porn was found on computer discs O'Malley's ex-wife turned over to the FBI.

Apparently, prosecutors charged O'Malley with obscenity, not child porn, so that their case wouldn't be tangled up in O'Malley's messy divorce. The child porn came to the feds through O'Malley's ex-wife, her lawyer, and a private investigator, the memo confirms. But some of the adult obscenity came from a computer seized directly from his home, and federal policy is to charge a defendant with "the most readily provable offense," the memo said.

Still, the prosecutors write, "The forensic examinations seemed to authenticate the evidence of child pornography." The memo describes the porn with alarm. "The depravity and deviance of the material sought by the Defendant, especially with the focus of so many stories on sex between children and adults, children and relatives, and children and animals; all while Defendant was the custodial parent of similarly aged children, significantly enhances the seriousness of Defendant's conduct and mandates a five-term of imprisonment," the prosecutors argue.

The memo also cites O'Malley's disorderly conduct conviction for a 2003 fight in Chagrin Falls, and "numerous confrontations with the police" in the last five years "documenting further aggressive behavior." (Many of these incidents are described in my story.) "The sentence must protect the public from further crimes of the defendant," the prosecutors argue. "An arrest, conviction, and fine were inadequate to deter Defendant in the past."

We've posted the prosecutor's memo online (click here), but be forewarned that parts of it describe the sexually explicit material in some detail.

Also, we've posted the sentencing memo from O'Malley's lawyer, Ian Friedman (click here). It argues that O'Malley should receive probation and that imprisoning him would harm his children (ages 5 and 7). It cites several letters of support, some from former employees of his, describing his acts of charity. It argues that damage to a public official's reputation can be punishment enough, instead of imprisonment -- and cites President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence as an example.