Saturday, March 15, 2008

A higher standard should apply.

This happened in my town, so I'm doubly disgusted:
[A] former FBI official was sentenced yesterday to six years in prison for torturing his girlfriend at knifepoint and gunpoint during a six-hour ordeal in her Crystal City high-rise apartment. Carl L. Spicocchi, 55, a 19-year FBI veteran who had run the Toledo office and was on temporary assignment in Washington, pleaded guilty in Arlington County Circuit Court last year to two felony counts of abduction and using a firearm in the Aug. 23 attack.
...
In the statement, read by [Commonwealth's Attorney Lisa Bergman], the [victim] gave this account: When she came home that day, she found Spicocchi hiding in a closet, armed with a gun and a 10-inch knife. He stripped her and wrapped her in tape, then dragged her around the apartment by her hair. He forced the gun into her mouth and held the knife to her throat. He beat her repeatedly. He told her that he would cut open her veins and that, because of his training, he knew how long it would take the blood to drain from her body.
...
He told her that he planned to kill her and that she would soon join her father, who had died 10 months earlier. He said that he would write a check for $100,000 from her account and flee to South America after she was dead and that he had a plane ticket for a 6 a.m. flight.

Finally, the woman said, she escaped by running into the hall and screaming for help.
Six years, almost certainly served in protective custody, with time off for good behavior . . . that hardly seems like enough of a punishment, especially considering he attempted to use his status as an FBI agent to get off:
Spicocchi confessed only after he realized that police had enough evidence to convict him, and ... asked the police officer to let him go, as a favor, "cop to cop."
(via)
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