Almost a year after he was convicted, former Spokane PD officer Karl Thompson has been sentenced for beating Otto Zehm to death. (Previously.)
U.S. Attorney Mike Ormbsy, who credited the work of assistant Timothy Durkin and Justice Department trial attorney Victor Boutros, said the prosecutors started the day thinking they would be arguing to preserve a court pre-sentencing report recommending about two years in federal prison.
But by the end of the afternoon, Durkin and Boutros had convinced U.S. District Court Judge Fred Van Sickle that the circumstances of the case called for an actual sentencing range of nine to 11 years for the 65-year-old Thompson.
Nine to eleven years. That doesn’t sound too bad.
The judge then cited Thompson’s lifelong service as a law enforcement officer and gave him a downward “variance” in imposing a sentence of 51 months in federal prison, which is 19 months longer than the two officers convicted in the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles.
So he gets a “downward variance” for being a cop, even thought the crime he committed was in the line of duty and under the color of his authority as a cop, and even though he and his fellow cops tried to cover up his actions? That’s…special.
(Hattip to Balko on this. I missed it earlier in the week.)
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2012 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Clippings, Cops, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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