NEW YORK (AP) - A former jail guard who had a behind-bars affair with a New York City man convicted in the brutal slaying of two police officers was sentenced Wednesday to one year and one day in prison.
Nancy Gonzalez asked a judge in federal court in Brooklyn to spare her prison time, saying she wanted to be free to visit a baby son, Justus, fathered by the convicted killer in 2012.
A tearful Gonzalez asked for “a chance to pick up the pieces of my life and mend it for Justus’ sake.” Her lawyers described how she had sought psychotherapy and taken other steps to overcome a troubled upbringing and win back custody of her child, who is in the care of relatives.
But U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said Gonzalez’s offense went beyond having an impulsive tryst with an inmate. He cited evidence that she deliberately allowed the man, Ronell Wilson, to impregnate her to try to win him sympathy, and that she enabled him to create “medieval” conditions in his cellblock that put other guards and inmates at risk.
“This is not a person who understands all the things that are wrong with her. … I just don’t think she’s connected to reality,” he said.
Gonzalez, 30, had pleaded guilty last year to charges she intentionally engaged in a sex act with an inmate.
By adding an extra day to the one-year term, the judge qualified Gonzalez for time off for good behavior. She also must serve three years of probation once she completes her sentence.
Wilson, 31, was a young gang member on Staten Island when he was arrested in the point-blank shootings of undercover officers James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews in an illegal gun sting gone awry. Wilson was found guilty in 2006 and he was sentenced to death, but an appeals court threw out the sentence in 2010 and prosecutors chose to repeat a penalty phase.
While Wilson awaited the proceeding in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Gonzalez gave him favorable treatment and let him bully other inmates while they carried on their affair in a vacant activity room next to his cell, according to court papers.
Gonzalez was recorded telling another inmate that “she slit her pants so she could quickly engage in sexual intercourse with Wilson,” the papers said. “Once she learned that she was pregnant, the defendant brought the pregnancy test into the MDC to show Wilson.”
Last year, another jury found that Wilson should die by lethal injection and he was returned to the federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind.
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