DAVID CHANEN
The Anoka County attorney’s
office is appealing as too lenient a sentence given to a former Minneapolis
police officer who used the Internet to lure adolescent girls into sexual
encounters.
Bradley Schnickel, 34, was
sentenced in May to 30 months in prison, minus 197 days for time already
served. According to the state’s sentencing guideline, the presumptive sentence
was 10 years.
Many who were in the packed
Anoka County courtroom in May, including victims and their families, were
stunned when Judge James Cunningham sentenced Schnickel to less than one-fourth
of the nearly 12-year sentence that prosecutors sought. Authorities had said
there were 18 known victims, including two girls with whom Schnickel had sex,
one 14, the other 16.
But Cunningham said he was
convinced that Schnickel, who had been in counseling for more than a year,
demonstrated that he is amenable to treatment. He didn’t give further
explanation.
In 2013, Schnickel was
sentenced to a year in the Hennepin County workhouse in a plea agreement, for
sending nude photographs of himself to two teenage girls in that county.
He still has time left on his
sentences.
“None of the judge’s reasons for deviating
from the presumptive sentence are valid,” said Assistant Anoka County Attorney
Bob Goodell, who wrote the brief submitted to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
“We don’t believe he complied with the law when making sentencing decisions.”
Goodell noted that Schnickel
pleaded guilty to charges involving five victims in the Anoka County case, and
that the presumptive sentence for only one victim would have been 30 months. It
is unusual for prosecutors to challenge a sentence, but Goodell said the
sentence was shocking and that another court needs to address it.
In his brief, he wrote that the
sentence wasn’t proportional to the severity of the crimes. Schnickel
relentlessly groomed minors for potential sexual encounters on the Internet,
sent nude photos, offered alcohol in exchange for sex and obtained unauthorized
background information on his victims, the appeal said.
Fred Bruno, Schnickel’s
attorney, said he will ask the Court of Appeals to dismiss the county’s
challenge. Cunningham had the case for nearly a year and knew the case “inside
and out,” Bruno said, adding that the judge understood that the plea agreement
had a sentencing range from probation to 142 months.
“We all knew this,” Bruno said. “We hope the
judge will pick the low end and the prosecution hopes for the high end. This
happens all the time. Now it’s buyer’s remorse.”
Sending a police officer to
jail or prison for even one week is cruel and unusual punishment, Bruno said.
There were multiple victims, and the prosecution could have decided to have a
trial for each, he said.
“If he was convicted in every trial, he would
have been in prison for life,” Bruno said. “If they wanted a harsher deal, they
wouldn’t have gone with a deal.”
