Velella Is Granted Two More Weeks Of Freedom

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The New York Sun

Guy Velella, the former state senator whose early release from jail in September sparked outrage, is getting at least two more weeks of freedom.


A state appellate judge, Betty Weinberg Ellerin, granted an interim stay yesterday just a few hours before Velella, a longtime Bronx power broker, and his two co-defendants, Hector Del Toro and Manuel Gonzalez, were to surrender at 5 p.m. based on the order of another judge. The reprieve comes after a similar 11th-hour ruling last week.


Arguments in the case are now set for December 16, when a panel of appellate judges will hear the defendants’ appeal of the decision by a commission that they should be returned to Rikers Island, where they were serving their sentences.


The panel will also consider whether the Local Conditional Release Commission, which granted the early release, has the right to return Velella and the others to jail. After members of the original commission resigned under pressure from Mayor Bloomberg, a newly appointed group of commission members voted that the releases were illegal and ordered the three men in the Velella case, and two other inmates who were also freed, back to jail.


“All of these people should be allowed to continue their lives without having to come back and do this all over again,” Velella’s lawyer, Charles Stillman, told the Associated Press.


“I’m relieved and pleased,” he said. “We are grateful to the court for giving us this interim stay.”


Velella, 60, was indicted in 2002 on bribery charges and accused of taking $137,000 from contractors. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a deal that spared his father, who was also involved in the scheme, from going to trial.


A spokesman for the city Law Department, Kate O’Brien Ahlers, said yesterday that the time Velella and the others spend out of jail counts toward their sentence because it is considered probation. Velella served three months of his yearlong sentence in Rikers.


His lawyer revealed last week that Velella is suffering from prostate cancer.


The New York Sun

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