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Former Wentworth cops plead guilty to being yutzes
By adamg on Mon, 10/26/2009 - 3:03pm
The two erstwhile officers at the Wentworth Institute of Technology got 30 days probation today for attempting to sell college GPS and surveying equipment on eBay, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
Jonathan Carroll, Jr, 28, and Jay Cunha, 27, were charged with removing $40,000 worth of equipment from a storage unit and putting it up for sale. Unfortunately for them, another employee noticed the equipment was missing the very next day, the DA's office says. Other Wentworth officers checked out eBay to see if any of the equipment turned up there and then tracked the pair down by contacting somebody who made a successful $4,500 bid for one of the devices - a Trimble 5800 GPS.
The college was able to retrieve all of the missing equipment, the DA's office says.
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Comments
30 days probation for grand larceny?
The hooker from Haverhill below will probably end up with a stiffer sentence for "attempting to sell sex".
The DA wanted a year's probation
Judge said 30 days because their plea means another punishment - they'll never work in
this townlaw enforcement again.Very lenient
Another example of differing standards - to me, the breach of trust warrants tougher punishment. Who knows how much these two ripped off at Wentworth?
I pray they at least had to be found guilty of the felony, and not "continued without a finding."
It's probably worth noting
It's probably worth noting that people are sentenced for crimes they're convicted of committing, not crimes they might have committed. It's human nature to wonder if Offender X might at one time have committed Offenses Y and Z, but it's not legal to sentence him or her on that basis.
In Massachusetts as in most states, sentencing is based largely on two factors: a defendant's criminal record (in this case zero for both perps) and the victim's total loss (in this case zero for Wentworth). The court also found mitigating factors in the defendants' full admissions and guilty pleas, which is again a routine consideration in criminal cases.
Both defendants were indicted for felony larceny and pleaded guilty to felony larceny, which, as Adam pointed out, disqualifies them for almost any law enforcement work and (I believe) takes their respective Wentworth pensions off the table.
Snarky, your clients are scum
They stole $40,000 worth of stuff. They used a position of trust to do so.
The fact that they were stupid and got caught before they were able to turn the stolen goods into cash is not a mitigating circumstance, in my opinion. That had nothing to do with their intent, for which they should have been more severely punished.
JakeWark's "clients"
deselby, you seem to be operating under a serious misapprehension. Jake Wark is Dan Conley's press secretary.
The law distinguishes
The law distinguishes between the unsuccessful desire to commit an act and the successful completion of said act. An extreme example is murder -- mandatory life, no parole, if you do it, versus the possibility of probation if you botch it.
I respect your opinion and appreciate the sentiment behind it, and I'm really not being sarcastic here, but the laws regarding sentencing in Massachusetts are what they are and aren't always what we'd like them to be.
please clarify
Because the victim went to considerable effort to recover the property, these guys get a lighter sentence?
Okay. What universe does that make sense in?
Wentworth Police
Wentworth Police investigators recovered the property -- which is to be expected, because they're trained and salaried and expected to do such things on Wentworth's behalf. Because of their actions, Wentworth was not permanently deprived of its property. As noted above, Massachusetts courts take that factor -- among many factors -- into account at sentencing.