By Ralph Ciprianofor BigTrial.net
The judge wouldn't even let him out of jail to see Mom
Today in court, Judge Paul S. Diamond ripped former Philadelphia D.A. Rufus Seth Williams a new one before packing him off to jail for five years.
"You sold yourself to the parasites you surrounded yourself with," the judge blasted Williams during sentencing. The judge talked about "your profound dishonesty," and told the city's former top law enforcement officer, "I simply don't find you credible."
This was while the judge was declaring Williams a flight risk, and saying he couldn't take a chance of letting Williams out of jail. So the former D.A. could stay at his ex-wife's house, at the request of his lawyers, where he supposedly was going to get to see his ailing 85-year-old Mom one last time.
"The defendant stole from his mother," the judge asked incredulously, "and now he wants to see her?" The judge thought that demand was "so outrageous," he said from the bench, that he didn't think there were sufficient words in the English language to express how outrageous. The judge even went so far as to rip Williams' prepared statement, as read in court by his lawyer, by saying it "sounded like a campaign speech." Ouch.
No, our sad sack of a D.A., who got through life by conning the gullible, finally ran into somebody who wasn't buying it -- an angry Judge Diamond. Williams is lucky the plea bargain he agreed to didn't give the judge a chance to give Williams more time. Because he surely would have.
Williams, wearing a tan short-sleeve shirt, sweatpants and sneakers, showed up in court some 25 pounds lighter after a nearly four-month stay in solitary confinement. Williams, who used to go in for deep-tissue massages and deep-pore facials at the Union League and Sporting Club, as paid for by his political action committee, has been roughing it of late at the Special Housing Unit at Sixth and Market.
At the "SHU," they only let him out of his 8x10 cell one hour a day, and he only gets to make one phone call a month.
At the defense table, Williams, ever the drama queen, was dabbing his eyes to wipe away the tears while his lawyer, Tom Burke, read a statement from Williams' ex-wife Sonita.
According to Williams' ex, the two remain close "despite our divorce."
"Seth is a good man," his ex-wife said, even though he was a "flawed man who made flawed decisions."
"Seth has lost everything," his ex-wife pleaded with the judge, as Williams, right on cue, was dabbing his eyes, and reaching for the tissues. But the judge wasn't going along with Sonita Williams' plea to let her ex out of jail so he could spend time with his daughters and his Mom, before getting shipped off to prison.
Next, Burke, Williams' lawyer, talked about the "long hours, low pay and heavy workload" Williams endured as an assistant district attorney.
In pleading for mercy, Burke talked about the "great strides that he [Williams] made to improve the [D.A.'s] office," his "nearly 20 years of military service" in the U.S. Army and National Guard, and his "long service to the Catholic Church."
But Burke lost my sympathy when he talked about Williams'"courage in taking on the Catholic Church" in his crusade against sex abuse.
If there were any justice in our brazenly corrupt city, a special prosecutor would be investigating how Williams and a few of his prosecutors knowingly put a fraudulent sex abuse victim, Billy Doe AKA Danny Gallagher, on the witness stand to stage a witch hunt against the church, a witch hunt that put four men in jail for a string of phony rapes dreamed up by a junkie without a conscience.
The special prosecutor would also be looking into how the D.A.'s office under Rufus Seth Williams hooked Gallagher up with a civil lawyer, so he could sue the Catholic Church, and steal $5 million in a civil settlement, for imaginary pain and suffering.
And the special prosecutor would also be looking into whether anybody from the D.A.'s office got a kickback from that stolen $5 million.
Sorry, Mr. Burke, it wasn't courage that prompted Rufus Seth Williams to use a phony witness to stage a witch hunt, it was a lust for headlines. And the arrogance of somebody who says the law means whatever I say it means.
In pleading for mercy, Burke mentioned that Williams would be "virtually penniless" and without his law license, which was revoked last week, when he gets out jail.
Burke then read a prepared statement from the defendant.
In his statement, which he didn't have the guts to read himself, Williams talked about his "mistakes of character and judgment."
Completely lacking both, Williams jumped to his distinction as the city's first African-American D.A., and then he mentioned, "I squandered that trust placed in me."
"I have failed them," he said about his supporters. And he talked about "the shame I brought to the office I loved," and how much he had hurt his ex-wife, and his girlfriend.
Next up was Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Zauzmer, who said that Williams didn't deserve any credit, at least at sentencing, for the good things he did while in office. Instead, Zauzmer asked the judge to remember the "devastating effect" Williams' corruption had on the men and women left at the D.A.'s office.
"He is a criminal," Zauzmer said. "And he was a criminal for a long period of time."
The prosecutor talked about how Williams used to take SUVs set aside for drug investigations and use them as his own personal vehicles, for going on vacations, sporting around town, etc.
As D.A. Williams earned between $170,000 and $200,000 a year, Zauzmer said, and yet, "It wasn't good enough for Mr. Williams. He just wants more."
More, both the prosecutor and judge noted, involved stealing $23,000 intended for his mother's care in a Catholic nursing home.
After the oratory was over, the judge sentenced Williams to 60 months in jail, followed by three years of supervised release, also known as probation. Williams also has to pay $58,422 in restitution.
The judge did not impose a fine on Williams, because he noted the deadbeat defendant, who also couldn't pay his lawyers, was dead broke.
And then it was time to slap the cuffs back on Williams, and lead him off to solitary confinement, while he awaits a permanent prison assignment for the next five years of his life.
Outside the courthouse, defense lawyer Burke said he was disappointed, but not surprised, by the judge's decision to not allow Williams to see his mother.
"Yeah, we're a little disappointed at that," Burke said, adding that he had implored the judge to allow the visit for Mom's sake, and not for sonny boy's.
But Zauzmer said the judge made the right decision, because he had determined that Williams wasn't credible, and that he also posed a flight risk.