[MSN] CINCINNATI --Four men serving 87-month sentences for stealing rare books and sketches from Transylvania University library should receive less prison time, their lawyers argued yesterday.

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Shorter sentences sought for four in Transy heist
JUDGE ERRED OVER CLASS OF WEAPON, LAWYERS SAY
By Beth Musgrave
BMUSGRAVE at HERALD-LEADER.COM

CINCINNATI --Four men serving 87-month sentences for stealing rare books and
sketches from Transylvania University library should receive less prison
time, their lawyers argued yesterday.

Warren Lipka, Eric Borsuk, Spencer Reinhard, all 23, and Charles Allen, 22,
pleaded guilty in 2005 to stealing several works -- including John James
Audubon sketches -- from the Lexington private university's rare book
collection in December 2004. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman sentenced
each of the men to seven years and three months in prison. The former high
school athletes have already served almost two years of that sentence.

The bold theft of rare books by then-20-year-olds generated local and
national news media attention. Most recently, a story about the four men
appeared in the December issue of Vanity Fair.

Defense attorneys and federal prosecutors appealed the sentence on different
grounds. Defense lawyers, in oral arguments before a three-judge panel of
the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, argued that Coffman erred
when she ruled that a stun pen used to subdue Transy librarian B.J. Gooch
during the heist was a dangerous weapon. Under the federal sentencing
guidelines, the use of a dangerous weapon during the commission of a crime
increases the amount of time spent in prison. In the case of the four men,
the finding that a dangerous weapon was used translated to about a 17-month
increase in their sentence.

Mike Mazzoli, an attorney for Reinhard, said defense attorneys were not
trying to trivialize the fear or pain that Gooch suffered. Lipka and Borsuk
tied Gooch up, used a stunning device on her arm and blindfolded her.
Mazzoli and defense attorneys Adele Burt Brown and Fred Peters argued in
court documents that the stun pen that was used on Gooch could not be
construed as a dangerous weapon because the type of electrical jolt it gives
a victim is small and does no long-term harm.

"It can not cause death or serious injury as it is defined by the
guidelines," Mazzoli argued.

Prosecutors, however, disagreed, arguing that at the time of the assault,
Gooch believed that the weapon used on her was dangerous and could cause
bodily harm.

Kevin Gingras, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice in
Washington, D.C., also argued yesterday that the men should have received
additional jail time on top of the 87-month sentence. Coffman, when
calculating the loss to the university, failed to add the value of several
books that Borsuk and Lipka dropped in a stairwell when they were leaving
the special-collections library.

Coffman calculated that the loss to the university was about $735,000. But
if the books, including two volumes of Audubon's Birds of America, that the
men had intended to steal but dropped were included in that tally, the men
would have received an additional 21 months in federal prison, Gingras said.

It only makes sense that the total value of everything that they intended to
steal, not just what they left with, should be calculated, Gingras argued.

Patrick Nash, an attorney for Allen, argued that Allen should have received
less jail time because his role in the heist was minor. Allen's sentence
should also be reconsidered because federal prosecutors violated an
agreement between Allen and investigators.

Nash said that Allen had signed an immunity agreement that allowed him to
tell prosecutors information that was not supposed to be used against him.
But some of that information was passed on to probation and parole officers,
creating a breach of trust, Nash said.

What Allen told investigators is not known. All motions regarding his appeal
have been sealed.

The three-judge panel did not issue a ruling after yesterday's hearing in
federal court in Cincinnati. If the panel decides Coffman erred, the case
will be remanded to the federal district court and the men will be
resentenced. Lipka, Borsuk and Reinhard are in federal prison in Ashland.
Allen is in federal prison in Lexington, according to the Federal Bureau of
Prisons. The four were arrested in February 2005 after they tried to sell
the sketches and manuscripts to Christie's, a New York auction house. 

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