Brooklyn man gets 5 years in child porn case

A Brooklyn pizzeria operator was sentenced to 5 years in prison Thursday for using child pornography after a big-name federal judge got in one last lick in his feud with the government over mandatory sentences for kiddie porn.

Defendant Pietro Polouizzi, 57, claimed in wrenching testimony at his trial in 2007 that he had been raped as a child in Italy, and that abuse drove him to seek out porn as an adult - claims he repeated Thursday in an agonized lament as his tearful wife and two sons watched.

"I'm not an abuser, I'm a victim," he shouted in a thick Italian accent at the prosecutor. "Oh my goodness. This is crazy."

Polouizzi has stayed out of jail because of legal maneuvers by U.S. District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein, who views the 5-year minimum as an intrusion on judicial discretion, and too harsh. He was twice slapped down by the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for trying to give Polouizzi a shorter sentence or a new trial.

Thursday, Weinstein said he finally had to impose the 5-year sentence, but he refused to jail Polouizzi immediately, telling the prosecutor that a statute requiring immediate imprisonment was "cruel and unusual" punishment. He gave Polouizzi until March to surrender himself.

He said the pizza man had never abused anyone.

"The direct damage this sentence of incarceration will cause to the defendant and to his family is far greater than any indirect damage he may have inadvertently created in harming those shown on the pictures or videos," Weinstein wrote in an opinion late Thursday.

Prosecutors said Polouizzi was fueling the industry by spending $80 a month on websites to look at little girls and suggested his in-court breakdowns were staged.