Terrigno Gets 60 Days for Embezzlement

Citing the need to send a public message, a federal judge on Wednesday sentenced former West Hollywood Mayor Valerie Terrigno to 60 days in custody for embezzling about $7,000 in federal funds while heading a now-defunct counseling center.

U.S. District Judge Laughlin Waters also placed the 32-year-old Terrigno on five years’ probation, ordered her to repay the $7,000 and do 1,000 hours of community service and forbade her from profiting during probation from speaking engagements, movies, books or other coverage of the case.

In sentencing Terrigno, who resigned her seat on the West Hollywood City Council earlier Wednesday, the judge said the case had high visibility and as such, the sentence should send a message that embezzlement of public funds is “simply not acceptable in our society.”

“I think she knew what she was doing, and did it very deliberately,” Waters said.

Terrigno was sentenced for using $380 in public funds to pay her rent. The remaining 11 counts on which she was convicted were suspended. She was ordered to surrender to authorities on May 21 for recommended incarceration in a community treatment center; it will be up to federal prison authorities where she is held.

When she was indicted last October, Terrigno was initially accused of 14 counts of embezzling $11,000 in public funds from 1982 to 1984, while she headed Crossroads Counseling Service. Prosecutors alleged that she diverted some of the funds to her City Council race. Two counts were subsequently dropped.

After her indictment, Terrigno, who openly ran for the City Council as an avowed lesbian when West Hollywood was incorporated in 1984, said she had been singled out because of her homosexuality. Her lawyer, Howard L. Weitzman, raised the issue again at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing. He suggested that there was a special “posture” about the case revealed in the government’s sentencing memo, which pointed out that the court should consider a defendant’s past life and moral character in passing sentence.

Weitzman also quoted the foreman of the jury that convicted his client in less than two hours after a four-day trial as saying that jurors judged her “just like a normal person.” He expressed the hope that the court “not consider the fact that she is gay.”

The judge interrupted to say, “This is not a factor in my mind.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard M. Callahan noted in a raised voice that the only times Weitzman had raised the homophobia issue was after Terrigno had been indicted and at her sentencing, not during the trial.

He assured the court that the government had moved in the case because Terrigno committed embezzlement--”period.” He said the government could have proven that she embezzled much more and that the amount of money “misspent” by Terrigno had been more than half or two-thirds of the $41,000 she had received.

After Wednesday’s hearing, Callahan said he was “totally satisfied” with the sentence. Weitzman said he considered the sentence “fair under the circumstances she found herself under.” He said he planned to file a notice of appeal.