Plaxico Burress is still looking for his get-out-of-jail-free card.
The former Giants wide receiver, who’s two months into a two-year sentence for illegal gun possession after he shot himself in a Midtown club last November, has applied for a work furlough that could spring him early next year, The Post reported Monday.
The furlough could let him spend up to seven nights a week at home as he shops his talents to NFL teams.
That’d be great for Burress — and awful for New Yorkers’ faith in the criminal-justice system.
Not to mention, for police efforts to keep illegal guns off the streets.
State law, after all, lays down a mandatory 3½ years in jail for the carrying of an illicit firearm.
Burress, through a plea bargain, was able to get his sentence cut to 2 years.
But for him to breathe free air after barely 3½ months would send the message far and wide that New York doesn’t take its gun laws seriously.
The culprit, in this instance, is a 2007 executive order signed by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer allowing furloughs for possession if prosecutors couldn’t prove that inmates intended to use their guns — as if just carrying one isn’t proof of intent.
To be sure, furloughs were granted to fewer than 5 percent of applicants last year — but they account for only one loophole in what appears to be a Swiss-cheese penal code.
“If you’re savvy and know how to work the rules, the minimum is not the minimum,” one senior law-enforcement official told The Post.
Burress’ lawyer, for his part, says he fears his client’s “celebrity status” will keep him from getting the leniency he’s “entitled to.”
Well, no.
The state Department of Correction presumably cares about the rule of law.
It needs to say no on the merits.
Plax needs to do his time.