INDIANA
CBS Chicago
CHICAGO (STMW) – A federal judge has shot down former First Baptist Church of Hammond Pastor Jack Schaap’s motion to cut his 12-year prison sentence.
U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano also denied Schaap’s request for a hearing on his motions and denied him a certificate to appeal to the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Schaap pleaded guilty in September 2012 to taking a 16-year-old parishioner, who was also a student at the church’s school and under Schaap’s care for counseling, across state lines for sex three times. Lozano sentenced him in March 2013 to 12 years in prison, two years more than the 10-year sentence that federal attorneys had agreed as part of his plea deal to recommend.
Schaap then filed a motion earlier this year asking to have his sentence vacated because he claimed his original attorneys had promised that Lozano would sentence him at most 10 years in prison and most likely only a few years.
The charge comes with a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison, however. Lozano noted in his order, issued Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond, that he quizzed Schaap on the issue thoroughly during Schaap’s change of plea hearing, including on whether he understood that the final sentence was up to the judge.
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