Metro

Dirty cop’s court break

OUT ON BAIL:Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata, in court yesterday, had the start of their jail terms postponed.

OUT ON BAIL:Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata, in court yesterday, had the start of their jail terms postponed. (Steven Hirsch)

OUT ON BAIL: Kenneth Moreno (left) and Franklin Mata, in court yesterday, had the start of their jail terms postponed. (
)

He’ll be home for Thanksgiving — just maybe not for Christmas.

Kenneth Moreno, the lead officer in last year’s notorious “Rape Cops” trial, won’t have to start his one-year sentence until Dec. 20 at the earliest, thanks to his latest attempt to appeal his misdemeanor convictions in the case, his former judge said yesterday.

Moreno got the good news in the same Manhattan courtroom where he’d been controversially cleared, along with his partner, in the alleged on-duty rape of a drunken young fashion executive he’d been dispatched to help.

Moreno, 44, a Brooklyn father of two, was found guilty of three counts of official misconduct, one for each time he and his partner, Franklin Mata, were caught on sidewalk video using the woman’s keys to re-enter her East Village apartment.

Both originally had been due to surrender and begin serving their sentences yesterday. Moreno remains free on $125,000 bail. Mata was sentenced to 60 days for misconduct, and has yet to file another appeal. He, too, is being allowed to remain free until Dec. 20.

“He’s got a very good case. I’m very confident about our submissions before the Court of Appeals,” said Moreno’s appellate lawyer, Stephen Preziosi, referring to the highest court in New York state.

Following their May 2011 convictions, both cops were immediately fired. They have been allowed to stay free pending appeal.

A panel of state appellate judges upheld the misdemeanor convictions earlier this month. In not requiring their surrender yesterday, their trial and sentencing judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro, was abiding by an order by Court of Appeals Judge Victoria Graffeo.

If Graffeo ultimately decides to hear Moreno’s appeal, he could stay out past Dec. 20, Preziosi said.

The appeal would argue that Moreno and Mata did not neglect their official duties while inside the woman’s apartment, and that prosecutors misstated the law to the jury during summations.

Moreno and Mata, 30, had been summoned to help the drunken executive out of a taxi outside of her apartment on a predawn morning in December 2008.

The woman told jurors at trial last year that she woke up on her bed hours later to find Moreno raping her, but also that she was blacked out during much of the evening.