Federal Appeals Court Upholds Barry Freundel’s 6.5 Year Prison Sentence

JTA
September 18, 2016

http://www.jta.org/2016/09/18/news-opinion/united-states/federal-appeals-court-upholds-barry-freundels-6-5-year-prison-sentence

A federal appeals court upheld the prison sentence of Rabbi Barry Freundel, a once-prominent modern Orthodox rabbi in Washington who secretly videotaped women in his synagogue’s mikvah.

Freundel, 64, who began serving his sentence in May 2015, had been sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism, a charge that carries up to a year in jail.

The sentencing judge had ordered Freundel to serve 45 days on each count, and ran the sentences one after the other. Freundel’s attorney had argued in the appeal that the sentences should have run concurrently, meaning Freundel would have served 45 days.

A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld Freundel’s sentence in a unanimous 20-page ruling.

Before his arrest in 2014, Freundel was the longtime rabbi of Kesher Israel in the Georgetown section of Washington and an active member of the Rabbinical Council of America, an Orthodox rabbinic group.