Brooklyn man who confessed to assaulting sleeping woman on transatlantic flight gets no jail time
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What the hell does it take to get locked up for a sexual assault in New York? 36-Year-Old Man Admits To Sexually Assaulting A Sleeping 25-Year-Old Woman On A Passenger Plane, Calling It ‘Mistrial Judgment’, But Soft Justice Judge REFUSES To Jail Him
- A Brooklyn man who admitted to sexually assaulting a sleeping woman on a transatlantic flight will get no jail time
- Daniel Katz, 36, will receive just one year of probation for his actions after being convicted by a federal jury in June 2021.
- Prosecutors said Katz assaulted a “vulnerable young woman” by putting his hands down her pants and touching her while she was unconscious.
- Katz is on house arrest for three months, has to do 75 hours of community service and go on the sex offender registry, plus a year of probation.
- However, Brooklyn federal judge Frederic Block, a Clinton appointee, denied prosecutors’ request for jail time.
- Block has previously used the idea of ’collateral consequences’ to avoid jail time.
A Brooklyn man who admitted to sexually assaulting a 25-year-old woman who was sleeping on a transatlantic flight will get no jail time, and a federal judge said being registered as a sex offender would “impair his ability to find employment and travel.”
Daniel Katz, 36, will receive just one year of probation for his actions after being convicted by a federal jury in June 2021 on both counts of an abusive sexual contact and assault allegation.
The US Attorney’s Office said Katz assaulted a “vulnerable young woman sleeping in a darkened airplane cabin” by putting his hands down her pants and touching her while she was unconscious.
Katz will be on house arrest for three months, has to do 75 hours of community service and be placed on the sex offender registry, plus a year of probation.
However, Brooklyn federal judge Frederic Block, a Clinton appointee, rejected prosecutors’ request for jail time, believing the sentence was punishment enough.
Brooklyn federal judge Frederic Block, a Clinton appointee, rejected prosecutors’ request for jail time, believing the sentence was punishment enough.
‘It will affect their ability to find employment and travel. [The] sex offender registration would cause enormous collateral damage.’
Block has previously used the idea of ”collateral consequences” in sentencing. In 2016, a man convicted of attempting to import, sell and possess cocaine was given just a year of probation and claimed the “collateral consequences” faced by convicted felons are punishment enough, according to the New York Times.
He said at the time that prison time “has no useful function other than to further punish criminal defendants after they have completed their court-imposed sentences.”
The incident took place on Etihad Airways Flight 103 on February 24, 2018, en route from Abu Dhabi to New York City’s JFK Airport.
Katz made a servile statement before his sentencing on Friday, according to yahoo News.
A Brooklyn man who admitted to sexually assaulting a sleeping woman on a transatlantic flight won’t get jail time, and a federal judge said being registered as a sex offender is enough
He called the sexual abuse of an unconscious woman a ‘lapse in judgement’, adding: ‘I would give anything to go back in time. In the future, I will always seek to obtain verbal consent.’
His victim said she is still living with the trauma four years later in a statement prior to Katz’s sentencing.
She said: ‘It’s traumatizing, stuck on a flight for what seemed like days with my abuser. I can’t count how many panic attacks or nervous breakdowns I’ve had from the weight of this. It still makes me feel so small.
The prewritten statement, which the victim called reading aloud “the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” continues: “It’s shocking in 2022, no matter how hard and well women have fought for rights, that this has “I have to be debated in court whether it’s right or wrong. I turn to the system that has the power to change things, so that another young woman doesn’t hide her abuse.”
Katz does not appear to have been placed on the sex offender registry as of this writing.