Ex.-Sen. Kruger gets 7 years in influence case

The onetime chairman of New York State's powerful Senate Finance Committee was sentenced to 7 years in prison Thursday by a judge who said his multiyear bribery scheme struck "like daggers in the heart of honest government."

Former state Sen. Carl Kruger was sentenced several months after pleading guilty to criminal charges, admitting that he accepted nearly a half-million dollars in bribes from a variety of businesspeople. He resigned the same December day from a Senate seat he had held since 1994.

Thursday, Kruger wiped tears from his eyes as his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, argued that his client's good deeds should mean he receive less than the 9 to 11 years in prison called for by federal sentencing guidelines. Brafman called Kruger broken and unemployable and said sadness overwhelms his life.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff agreed to dip below the guidelines but offered a stinging review of the former lawmaker's crimes, saying the acts of compassion he had shown constituents were tempered by a glaring fact: "That without any need to do so, Mr. Kruger entered into long-lasting extensive bribery schemes that were frankly like daggers in the heart of honest government."

As the judge announced the prison term, Kruger shook his head, a motion consistent with the disappointment in himself that he expressed during comments a few moments earlier.

"I have no one but myself to blame and that reality will haunt me for the rest of my life," Kruger, 62, said.

"My actions will forever overshadow whatever legacy I managed to achieve," he said.

Kruger, a Democrat, was the chairman of the finance committee from 2008 to 2010, when his party controlled the Senate.

At the time of his guilty plea to two counts of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit bribery, the Brooklyn resident resigned from his Senate seat, which remains unfilled five months later.