Culture of Corruption: 3 Years After Guilty Plea, Ex-Legislator Is Sentenced

NYT

Three years after Fred Towle Jr. was charged with corruption, pleaded guilty and resigned as a Suffolk County legislator, he was finally sentenced yesterday. Prosecutors say the long delay occurred because he was working with them on a dozen other public corruption cases.

"He did everything we asked of him," Thomas J. Spota, the Suffolk County district attorney, said yesterday. "It was invaluable."

Mr. Towle's help, which included wearing a secret recording device, proved to be a turning point in the history of Suffolk government and politics, notorious over the decades for its scandals. The Towle case started a chain reaction of investigations, snaring a growing roster from low-level civil servants to high-profile politicians and helping to end the Republican monopoly on local elections.

"His cooperation helped the district attorney address the culture of corruption in the county," an assistant district attorney, Christopher McPartland, said of Mr. Towle, a Republican, at the sentencing in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead yesterday. In return, Judge Robert Doyle reduced Mr. Towle's sentence to six months' imprisonment, from a possible two to six years. Mr. Towle pleaded guilty to one count each of receiving a bribe and a scheme to defraud. Thirty-three other charges were dropped.