Supreme Court won't review LI slave case

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday refused to review the cases of a wealthy couple from Muttontown who were convicted in 2007 of enslaving two Indonesian housekeepers.

The decision ends a criminal case that earned national attention because of the details of physical and mental mistreatment of the two women that came out in the federal trial in Central Islip.

A federal prosecutor in the case, Mark Lesko, now Brookhaven Town supervisor, said Tuesday: "This is the last chapter in a terrible story of abuse and torture. Justice is finally done."

Demetri Jones, the other federal prosecutor on the case, said, "We are gratified that the case has come to an end; we are happy with the results."

Varsha Sabhnani was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for being the principal person who abused the two barely literate Indonesian women, Enung and Samirah, who used only a single name.

Sabhnani is serving her sentence in a federal prison in Minnesota.

Her husband, Mahender, was sentenced to 40 months in prison and is in a federal prison in Florida, according to Bureau of Prison records.

Varsha Sabhnani had argued in her unsuccessful attempt to get the Supreme Court to review her case that pretrial publicity had prevented her from getting a fair trial, court papers say.

Mahender Sabhnani had argued, on a more technical ground, that his actions in treating the two women did not meet the legal criteria for one of the charges he was convicted of, aiding and abetting his wife in abusing the women.

U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Spatt, who presided over the Sabhnanis' trial, had ruled against those arguments, as did a federal appeals court.

Attorneys for the Sabhnanis and the Indonesian women could not be reached Tuesday night.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Sotomayor did not take part in the decision, apparently because she had been on the federal appeals court panel in Manhattan in March that had upheld the convictions.