The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is taking the unusual step of challenging the house-arrest sentence a judge imposed on a former county prosecutor who admitted endangering and corrupting teens in his church youth group, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Anthony Cappuccio, 32, received a three- to 23-month sentence last week after admitting he had shared alcohol and drugs with three teenage youths and had a sexual relationship with one of them. That Judge C. Theodore Fritsch allowed Cappuccio to serve the sentence at his own residence was “absurdly unreasonable,” said Senior Deputy Attorney General E. Marc Costanzo.
Costanzo said he would have been satisfied if the sentence had included active jail time. Costanzo’s motion asks that Fritsch schedule a hearing to consider toughening the penalty. “The needs of the victims, and society []. were abjectly ignored in the sentencing process,” Costanzo wrote. Fritsch’s sentence drew gasps from the victims’ families. Costanzo compared Cappuccio’s punishment to being “grounded in his room.” Cappuccio had been a chief deputy district attorney in Bucks County until September, when police discovered him half-clothed in a parked car with a 17-year-old youth.