Search
Close this search box.

Superior Court Throws Out Perzel Sentence

Speaker_Perzel_Official_PictureThe Superior Court ruled today that the trial court had erred when it sentenced former state House Speaker to pay $1 million in restitution to Pennsylvania.  

“[T]he Commonwealth is not a victim or a reimbursable compensating government agency … Thus, Appellant’s sentence of restitution to the Commonwealth in the amount of $1,000,000 is illegal, and an illegal sentence is subject to correction,” the court wrote in its ruling.  

Perzel already served the minimum sentence of two years after pleading guilty to four counts of conspiracy, two counts of conflict of interest, and two counts of theft by mail.

The court noted that the convictions were not overturned by its decision.

11 Responses

  1. Tremendous things here. I am very happy to peer your post.
    Thanks a lot and I am looking ahead to contact you.
    Will you please drop me a e-mail?
    Sverige drakt kortermet

  2. Isaac. You’re actually incorrect. It was a legislative system that was ultimately sold to the campaign arm for a price the AG said was too low. The state actually made money off of Perzel.

  3. Steve, you’re a little off there: Perzel’s computer system was a voter file data mining system meant to be used for political campaigns and influence elections. Democrats had a voter file system at the time as well, but the difference is the Democrats built their voter file system with legal political donations and the Republicans illegally used the Pennsylvania taxpayers to pay for their system. This wasn’t some case of just buying some computers or software that were going to be used for legislative business anyway, it was a criminal scheme to use taxpayer money to influence elections. Given how little regulation there is over political contributions in PA in the first place, it was a pretty stupid and lazy scheme at that.

  4. Obviously Yorkster never worked in a restaurant. The wait staff really works very hard. If he had I doubt he would be so condescending regarding John Perzel’s previous career.

  5. The Perzel case (crime) never cost taxpayers that amount of money. The computers and the software were already being used by the Caucus for legitimate legislative business. So there was no “financial” hit to the state or taxpayers. It still wasn’t right to do… but it’s not like he billed the Commonwealth for campaign items….or paid bonuses with taxpayer money for campaign work.

  6. I guess he can now resume his previous career as a head waiter !!!
    What a joke our judicial system is but not worth laughing at.

  7. So if I am drunk and crash into a state police cruiser, which is Commonwealth property, neither I nor my insurance carrier has to reimburse the Commonwealth? C’mon. I disagree with the $1 million reimbursement on the grounds that it is excessive punishment that basically sentences Perzel to not just two years, but to lifelong penury. But this reasoning is absurd.

  8. How about just making him pay for all the harm he has done to the legislative system and the public who now have reinforcement of the belief that the bigger the crook, the lesser the punishment? Oh well I guess he can go back to being a head waiter !!

  9. Another verdict showing we have two systems of justice in this country, one for white collar criminals who lawyer up, and one for everyone else. The Commonwealth (taxpayers) are not reimbursable…ok

Email:
  • Do you agree that ByteDance should be forced to divest TikTok?


    • Yes. It's a national security risk. (60%)
    • No. It's an app used by millions and poses no threat. (40%)
    • What's ByteDance? (0%)

    Total Voters: 30

    Loading ... Loading ...
Continue to Browser

PoliticsPA

To install tap and choose
Add to Home Screen