Facing guidelines recommending decades in prison, former Senator Menendez requests “sentence that relies heavily on alternatives to incarceration”

As reported in this New York Times piece, weeks “before Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s disgraced former U.S. senator, is scheduled to be sentenced for corruption, his lawyers submitted an emotion-laden appeal for leniency based on what they depicted as Mr. Menendez’s hardscrabble upbringing, life of service and devotion to family.”  Here is more about the sentencing filing:

As they did during Mr. Menendez’s two-month bribery trial in Manhattan, [his lawyers] suggested that their client’s greatest failing was being led astray by a conniving wife. Nadine Menendez, the former senator’s wife, was charged with her husband with conspiring to trade his political influence for bribes of cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. Her trial is expected to start next month….

“The evidence showed that Senator Menendez was unaware of activities that Nadine was undertaking, including the receipt and sale of gold bars by Nadine, and cash she stored in her locked closet and her safe deposit box,” the lawyers wrote in their filing.

And in a letter of support also filed on Thursday, Mr. Menendez’s daughter, Alicia Menendez, a high-profile anchor on the cable news network MSNBC, hinted at the sacrifices her father continued to make for his wife, who was being treated for breast cancer….

Her letter is among more than 120 filed on behalf of Mr. Menendez, part of an attempt to justify a prison term far shorter than the 12 years recommended by the court’s probation department. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Mr. Menendez, is expected to disclose the government’s sentencing recommendation in the coming weeks….

In Thursday’s filing, the former senator’s lawyers argued that the probation department’s recommendation of a 12-year prison term was “draconian — likely a life and death sentence for someone of Bob’s age and condition.” [The lawyers] suggested that the guidelines instead merited a sentence of no more than 27 months — and even that, they wrote, was too long. They urged Judge Stein to consider a period of imprisonment of less than 27 months paired with “at least two years’ rigorous community service.”

“He is certain never to commit future offenses,” the lawyers wrote about Mr. Menendez. “And his current state — stripped of office and living under a permanent shadow of disgrace and mockery — are more than sufficient to reflect the seriousness of the offenses and to promote respect for the law.”

The full 52-page sentencing filing is available at this link, and concludes with this paragraph:

For the foregoing reasons, the sentencing factors set out in Section 3553(a), as applied to the circumstances of this defendant and case, justify a substantially below-Guidelines sentence that credits Senator Menendez’s lifetime of good deeds and good character, his low likelihood of offending in the future, and the punishment he has already sustained due to his conviction.  As urged by a friend and former member of the Puerto Rican Senate Roberto L. Prats, “please consider that you are sentencing a good man who devoted his entire professional career to serving others. In doing so, he touched the heart and soul of many citizens, me included, asking for nothing in return.” Ex. U (Letter submitted by Roberto L. Prats, Esq.).  We respectfully submit that the Court should impose a sentence that relies heavily on alternatives to incarceration, as such a sentence is sufficient but not greater than necessary to accomplish the purposes of sentencing under 18 U.S.C. §3553(a).