WASHINGTON (DC)
Forward
Julie Wiener
June 22, 2016
( JTA ) — An attorney for Rabbi Barry Freundel argued in a Washington, D.C., appeals court that the rabbi’s prison term for secretly videotaping women in his synagogue’s mikvah was too long.
The attorney argued Tuesday that the 6 1/2-year sentence handed down last year was illegal, The Associated Press reported . Freundel, a once-prominent modern Orthodox rabbi in Washington, had pleaded guilty.
According to the AP, the court “seemed likely to reject” the attorney’s argument that the sentence should have been limited to one year in prison. The website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia said it “will likely take several weeks to several months after the argument for the Court of Appeals to issue its decision.”
Freundel, 64, began serving his sentence in a Washington jail in May 2015. However, at his request the following month, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia recommended that he be transferred to a federal correctional facility either in Otisville, New York, or Miami.
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