He'll be home for Thanksgiving -- just maybe not for Christmas.
Kenneth Moreno -- the lead officer in last year's notorious "Rape Cops" trial -- won't have to start his one-year sentence in the case until Dec. 20 at the earliest, thanks to his latest attempt to appeal his misdemeanor official misconduct convictions in the case, his former trial judge told him today.
Moreno got the good news in the same Manhattan courtroom where he'd been controversially cleared, along with his partner, in the on-duty rape of a drunken young fashion executive he'd been dispatched to help.
Moreno, 44, a Brooklyn father of two, had been found guilty of three counts of misconduct, one for each time he and his partner, Franklin Mata, were caught on sidewalk video using the woman's keys to reenter her apartment.
He'd originally been due to surrender and begin serving his one year jail sentence on those counts today. He remains free on $125,000 bail. Mata was sentenced to 60 days, and as yet has not filed another appeal, but is also being allowed to remain free until Dec. 20.
"He's got a very good case," Moreno's appellate lawyer, Stephen Preziosi, told reporters as his glum-looking client left court.
"I'm very confident about our submissions before the Court of Appeals," the lawyer said, referring to the highest court in New York state.
Following their May, '11 convictions, both cops were immediately fired and eventually sentenced -- Moreno to one year and Mata to 60 days -- and have been allowed to stay free pending appeal.
A panel of state appellate judges upheld the misdemeanor convictions earlier this month. In not requiring their surrender today, their trial and sentencing judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro, was abiding by an order by Court of Appeals Judge Victoria Graffeo.
If Graffeo ultimately decides-- based on a month's worth of written and possibly oral arguments by prosecutors and Moreno's appellate lawyer -- to hear Moreno's appeal, he could stay out past Dec. 20, the lawyer said.
The appeal would argue -- as has been argued unsuccessfully before Carro and the lower appellate court -- that Moreno did not neglect their official duties while inside the woman's apartment, and that prosecutors misstated the law to the jury during summations.
Moreno and the partner, Mata, 30, had been summoned to help the drunken executive out of a taxi outside of her East Village apartment on a predawn morning in December, 2008.
The woman had tearfully told jurors at trial last year that she woke up on her bed hours later to find Moreno raping her, but also that she was blacked out during much of the evening.
Former accused 'Rape Cop' Kenneth Moreno gets a Thanksgiving reprieve from jail
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Former accused 'Rape Cop' Kenneth Moreno gets a Thanksgiving reprieve from jail
