She’s no victim, disgraced officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata say — but she’s sitting in the front row for their sentencing.
The woman at the center of the notorious “Rape Cops” case will watch as Moreno and Mata are sentenced on official misconduct charges today, even though the ex-cops will insist that their only crimes were “victimless” misdemeanors deserving of no jail, according to pre-sentencing papers obtained exclusively by The Post.
While prosecutors plan to deride the pair as deplorable “predators” who “subjected” a helpless woman to a sick sexual attack, defense lawyers plan to accuse prosecutors of themselves being the worst lawbreakers in the case — by continuing to call that same woman a victim.
“According to the jury’s verdict, [the ex-cops’ accuser] is not a ‘victim’ and her rights were not violated,” defense lawyers say in arguments sent to prosecutors and the sentencing judge last week.
Moreno and Mata were acquitted in May of the charges in which the woman could have been a victim — rape and burglary.
The ex-cops were convicted of three counts each of official misconduct for their three unauthorized, caught-on-video return visits to the woman’s East Village apartment on a December night in 2008. The woman had been so intoxicated that the cops were dispatched to help her out of a cab.
In each return visit, Moreno — the senior officer and the one the woman testified had stripped and raped her as she lay semiconscious on her bed — is on camera using the woman’s key to enter her building door.
Prosecutors will insist the ex-cops get the maximum sentence allowed by law — two years in prison. They are also hoping to at least read into the record a victim-impact statement, penned by the woman, that the papers say has already been filed with state probation officials, who have themselves recommended no prison time.
But since she’s legally not a victim, the woman should have no voice at the sentencing, the ex-cops insist.
They’ll also argue that the they have been sufficiently punished by losing their jobs and pensions.