Gregory Carro sentencing Mata to 60 days in prison.
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He’s sorry, all right.
An ex-cop accused of acting as a lookout while his partner took advantage of a drunk woman in her bedroom was ordered yesterday to serve up to 60 days in jail for official misconduct after offering a tearful apology to the judge.
“I would like to express how sorry I am for my actions,” Franklin Mata told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro. “I never meant for anyone to get hurt that night.
“I never had any ill intentions,” Mata said, his voice quivering as he pleaded with Carro for leniency.
But the judge was not moved.
“Forever, you will be a disgraced police officer. Forever, you will have that bright shining scarlet letter on your back,” Carro scolded Mata, 28, who has denied that his then-partner Kenneth Moreno sexually assaulted the woman they were supposed to be helping that night in December 2008.
Mata and Moreno were acquitted of rape and burglary after they made three caught-on-video return visits to the East Village apartment of a drunk young fashion executive, but were convicted of official misconduct for lying.
“I didn’t think that one night would end up costing me 2½ years of my life and my career,” Mata said. “I loved my job and worked hard to get where I was, and now it’s all gone.”
Carro sentenced Moreno to one year in jail earlier this week, and prosecutor Randolph Clarke urged the judge to throw the book at Mata as well.
He said Mata was Moreno’s “partner in crime,” and easily could have stopped what happened. “He could have just said one word — no. He didn’t. He went along for the ride,” and then helped cover it up “by testifying falsely” at trial, Clarke said.
Carro, who had harsh words for Moreno at his sentencing, also let Mata have it.
“You drew the short straw when you got [Moreno] as your partner,” the judge noted, but said he couldn’t understand why “for some reason you continued to carry your partner’s bags throughout the trial.”
“Maybe [Moreno’s] attorney was referring to you when he said ‘simpleton.’ Maybe you are the simpleton following the fox,” Carro said.
The judge also took aim at Mata’s claim that he was sleeping and didn’t hear anything going on in the woman’s apartment, even though he was on a couch right next to her thin bedroom wall.
“I guess that Blue Wall’s a lot thicker,” he said. Mata had to know that Moreno’s “motivations were morally bankrupt” in returning to the woman’s apartment, the judge said.
Mata doesn’t have to start serving the sentence until Sept. 12, which gives him time to file an appeal.
Moreno, 43, is out on bail pending appeal.