Recent Posts in Politics Category
| July 31, 2009 |
| DA John Peck Comes to Judge's Defense |
| Posted By L. Anthony Bompiani, Esquire |
 |
Here is an excerpt from an article published in the Tribune Review on July 30, 2009. The article was written by Rich Cholodofsky. Click here for the full text of the article.
District
Attorney John Peck said Wednesday that Internet child predators won't
run free in Westmoreland County in the wake of the attorney general's
announcement that the state office will no longer prosecute those cases
here.
"It's
not going to affect us. We're going to look very closely at each and
every case to file all possible cases if the attorney general's office
is not going to prosecute those in Westmoreland County," Peck said.
Attorney
General Tom Corbett's office announced on Tuesday that it has withdrawn
its Internet child predator task force from a Westmoreland County
office and will no longer bring cases before county judges. Instead,
the task force will try to steer suspects to other counties to make
arrests.
That
decision was the fallout over a sentencing disagreement involving the
case against Thomas Rose, a former sports editor at the
Observer-Reporter in Washington.
Rose
went before Judge Richard E. McCormick Jr. on Tuesday after
Pennsylvania appeals court judges ordered McCormick to reinstate a
felony conviction he had set aside following a three-day trial in
October 2006.
McCormick,
who in early 2007 imposed a four-year probation term on Rose, gave him
no further sentence on the felony offense. Prosecutors with Corbett's
office wanted Rose, 56, of Delmont, to spend at least two years in a
state prison.
That
prompted Corbett, through an office spokesman, to say that state agents
would no longer bring child predator cases in Westmoreland County
because McCormick's sentence was too lenient.
Peck
did not comment on the Rose case yesterday but defended McCormick,
saying his sentences typically are neither lenient nor excessive."
Judge
McCormick's career on the bench has been characterized by his unlimited
patience for litigants and his never-ending willingness to understand
arguments. He has a very refined sense of individualism as a judge, and
he's not a servant of the prosecution or defense attorneys.
"He's not deserving of personal criticisms because he made a decision a prosecutor doesn't agree with," Peck said.
|
|
| Continue reading "DA John Peck Comes to Judge's Defense" ยป |
|
Permalink  |
| | |