Former New York Assembly speaker gets 7-year prison sentence

Former New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D) on Friday was sentenced to seven years in prison for public corruption.

The sentence comes after his initial conviction and 12-year sentence in 2015 was thrown out by an appeals court.

Silver said in a statement that he was filled with remorse for his actions and feared he would die in prison, The Associated Press reports. U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni announced Silver’s sentence in a Manhattan court.

{mosads}The 74-year-old Democrat was once one of the most powerful politicians in New York state until his 2015 conviction for pocketing millions in fees from a cancer researcher and a real estate developer.

Silver’s original conviction was tossed out by a court of appeals that ruled Silver’s case must conform to a new Supreme Court ruling on the scope of public corruption cases.

In the new trial, prosecutors argued for Silver to spend more than a decade in jail while defense attorneys argued for a much shorter sentence, according to the AP.

Silver, a former top ally of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), faced up to 130 years in prison after being convicted of seven counts of federal corruption in May.

Prosecutors argued that Silver took advantage of his position in the government for illegal gain, while defense attorneys argued that his behavior was merely “distasteful.”

“Sheldon Silver repeatedly used his enormous public power for his own enormous private gain,” prosecutor Tatiana Martins told the jury in her closing statement.

“Distasteful is not criminal. A conflict of interest is not a criminal offense,” said defense attorney Michael Feldberg.

Silver first joined the State Assembly in 1976. He later became Speaker in 1996, serving in that role until 2015, when he was arrested on federal corruption charges.