Former Gov. Pataki was only doing his job when he kept more than 100 sexual predators locked up in the nuthouse even after they’d already finished their time behind bars, his lawyer said today.
Pataki — who is now being sued along with other state officials for the controversial 2005 policy, which was struck down a year later — listened intently in the Manhattan federal courtroom as his lawyer said he should be praised, not vilified.
“Punish him for what? For taking office when New York was the most violent state in America?” lawyer Abbe Lowell asked jurors. “These were men who raped and sodomized children, sometimes their own.”
Lowell said voters would have had a beef with Pataki if he didn’t seek all avenues to get violent perverts more help so that they didn’t repeat their heinous acts — even if it meant locking them up based on state shrinks’ opinions, without any recourse.
“Would it have shocked your conscience had Gov. Pataki done less?” Lowell said.
But the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs — five sex offenders and the estate of a sixth suing for $10 million apiece over the policy — appeared to nearly break down in tears as he talked about a system he said violated their constitutional rights.
His clients include a man who sexually abused a 5-year-old girl and another who molested his own 9-year-old daughter — as well as more than 20 other children.
“What else is more important that this: people’s lives and the Constitution of the United States,” said Rezvani, his voice cracking. “We don’t treat people like this in this country. You can’t do it!”
Rezvani accused Pataki and state officials of playing to the public’s worst fears at the time.
“No one is saying don’t lock up the bad guys — but do it right,” he said.
The policy “was a sham, point-blank, plain and simple,” Rezvani said. “Welcome to Prison No. 2.”
The defense claims that of the 797 sex criminals evaluated before release, only 112 were committed for more treatment before the plug was pulled on the program.
“That law was not a rubber stamp,” Lowell said. “It was a screening. It was an evaluation.”
Two of the plaintiffs who testified earlier acknowledged that their deviant sexual urges continued after prison.
One man was reprimanded while at Manhattan Psychiatric Center for masturbating in front of a nurse.
Another pedophile said he still fantasizes about children “from time to time.’’
Pataki had testified that he pushed for the policy after his own family was exposed to such a perv.
He recalled that in the mid-’90s, he was walking in a state park with his wife, young son and friends when he noticed a suspicious man near the kids. He later learned that the man was a convicted sex offender.
dli@nypost.com