By Samuel Newhouse
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
January 18, 2011
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=4&id=40749
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| Rabbi Israel Weingarten |
CADMAN PLAZA EAST — A former Brooklyn yeshiva teacher who mercilessly interrogated the daughter he raped, while representing himself in Brooklyn federal court got one of his charges dismissed by an appeals court Tuesday.
Rabbi Israel Weingarten was 59 and a resident of Upstate New York when he was convicted in 2009 after a jury trial before U.S. District Judge John Gleeson.
His pro se defense was noted for a lengthy, rambling cross-examination of the daughter he had repeatedly raped over a period of seven years, and who he repeatedly brought to tears on the witness stand.
The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled yesterday that Weingarten was improperly convicted on one count involving incest that occurred during a trip from Belgium to Israel.
The three-judge panel unanimously ruled that a citizen can't be found guilty of crimes overseas without a "territorial nexus to the United States," while upholding his other convictions, for sexual abuse committed on travels from Brooklyn to Belgium and Israel to Brooklyn.
Weingarten could get up to 10 years knocked off the 30-year sentence that Judge Gleeson imposed in March 2009.
A member of the Hasidic Satmar community, Weingarten transported his daughter to offshoots of the Hasidic community located in other parts of the world in order to continue molesting his daughter, which ended with her flight from the family.
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