Lock Shelly away

Manhattan Federal Judge Valerie Caproni knows very well the crimes that Shelly Silver committed as state Assembly speaker, having presided over his corruption trial twice.

She was there when he was convicted on all seven felony counts in 2015. She was there again this year when, in a retrial necessitated by jury instructions inconsistent with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, he was again found guilty on all seven felony counts.

The sentence Caproni imposes on Silver Friday must be at least as tough as the first time around. Then, calling him “a scheming, corrupt politician,” she whacked Silver with 12 years in federal prison, a $1.75 million fine and forfeiture of $5.3 million.

In a cringeworthy letter to Caproni asking for leniency last week, Silver wrote “how deeply sorry I am” without admitting his thieving ways of using his speaker’s post to cadge almost $4 million in illicit cash to boost the interests of a cancer researcher and a pair of real-estate big shots.

He also whined that “the work that has been the focus of most of my life has become dirty and shameful.”

The passive voice is criminal. He made it dirty and shameful: by keeping the people’s business in secret, by covering up sexual harassment in his midst, by giving friends and cronies special access to taxpayer goodies.

“I beg for your mercy so that I can somehow go out into the world again to atone to everyone I have hurt,” Silver pleaded. One atones to God; Silver will have plenty of time to do that from prison.