Thomas Hartmann (Steven Hirsch)
Prosecutors want the maximum sentence — a year in jail — for the one-legged Manhattan millionaire convicted of pummeling a self-proclaimed “naked masseuse” in an oddball assault-by-Rolex case.
In one corner of the bizarre misdemeanor dispute is limping lout Thomas Hartmann, a former Long Island construction worker who struck it rich by winning a multimillion-dollar police-brutality settlement in 2010.
Hartmann had been rammed by a cop car during an arrest on wife-harassment charges, losing his leg. He now lives on the Upper East Side, drives a Bentley and wears a solid gold Rolex.
In the dispute’s other corner is Russian-born stripper Sophia Kandelaki, who met the newly rich Hartmann in a flirtatious exchange at a drunken party at an Upper East Side restaurant last April.
It would not end well.
Last month, Kandelaki took the stand wearing jeans and a tube top, telling jurors how the drunken Hartmann struck her in the head with his timepiece-clad wrist as the two argued on the sidewalk.
“He grabs me by the ponytail and beat me,” Kandelaki told jurors in a thick Russian accent. She needed 16 stitches to her forehead.
“I felt uncontrollable energy in him.”
She also told jurors she is a survivor of a gunpoint kidnapping, a reality-star hopeful, a stripper, a vegan chef and an expert in “deep, inner tantric massage.”
“Men and women are naked,” she told jurors, describing the massage by rubbing her shoulders on the witness stand.
“Just touching, touching, touching,” she explained.
One such massage had resulted in a 2005 prostitution arrest, jurors learned.
Ultimately, the panel sided with Kandelaki, despite her arrest record, eccentricities, admitted tax evasions and big-money lawsuit.
One juror explained afterward, “The victim wasn’t on trial here.”
Hartmann — who insists that he struck Kandelaki accidentally, after losing his balance on his prosthetic leg when the stripper reached into his pocket — will be sentenced Feb. 16.
His lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said he’ll argue that Kandelaki had serious credibility issues, and that Hartmann is a good man who has given a lot of money to charity.
“We’re hoping he can stay out [of jail] altogether,” Tacopina said after a court appearance yesterday.