NEW YORK
New York Times
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
JULY 9, 2014
A cantor whose sexual abuse case split the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn was sentenced on Wednesday to two years in prison, as expected under a plea deal struck in May.
The cantor, Baruch Lebovits, is expected to serve only a few months of that sentence, because he received credit of 13 months for time served on a previous conviction on the same charge. An appeals court overturned that conviction in 2012.
The case was a prominent one for Charles J. Hynes, the former Brooklyn district attorney, who had vowed to fight sexual abuse among the ultra-Orthodox. Mr. Lebovits was convicted in 2010 of molesting a teenage boy on eight occasions. He was then sentenced to 10⅔ to 32 years in prison.
But after the conviction was overturned, on an evidentiary issue, Mr. Lebovits was released.
The office of Brooklyn’s new district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, had seemed to signal that it would pursue a new trial against Mr. Lebovits. But in May, at what was to be a routine hearing, prosecutors and defense lawyers discussed plea negotiations.
The judge, Justice Mark Dwyer of State Supreme Court, said then that he had researched normal prison terms for the type of felony Mr. Lebovits was accused of, and that two years was typical. The lawyers involved and the judge then agreed to two years.
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