Today, in a sad case that gives some perspective into the imperfect nature of pornography laws, a Brooklyn federal judge reluctantly sentenced a Bushwick pizzeria owner to five years in prison for possession of child pornography.
In the course of the case, it was revealed that defendant Peter Polizzi has been sexually abused as a child; he described in detail to the court how he was raped as a child in Sicily by an uncle, a family friend and two police officers. Judge Jack Weinstein wanted to sentence him to a year and a day, but said he had been ordered by the U.S. Court of Appeals to hand out the statute's mandatory sentence. He called the five-year sentence "grossly excessive" given the circumstances of the case. Polizzi's wife Anna, who is suffering from cancer, thanked Weinstein for understanding that "not everything is black and white."
