EX-N.Y. Assembly speaker gets 7 years for corruption
NEW YORK — 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 tostop.”
The sentence by U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni amounts to five fewer years than she gave him after he was initially convicted 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, also were 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.
The judge said the trials meant that “corruption cases have touched either directly or indirectly all of the infamous three men in a room.”
“This has to stop,” Caproni said. “New York has to get its act together.”
Before announcing the sentence and a $1.75 million fine, Caproni said Silver seemed to have aged more than normal in the three years while his case has proceeded.
She said “further reflection” led her to the conclusion that the original sentence was longer than necessary.
Silver’s original conviction was tossed out by an appeals court, but he fared no better at a second trial. A jury again found him guilty of taking nearly $4 million in return for legislative favors he performed for a cancer researcher and real estate developers.