Convicted N.Y. Judge Loses Prison Request

Sol Wachtler, former chief judge of New York, lost his bid to go to a minimum-security prison camp near his mother in Florida and has been ordered to surrender today at a medium-security penitentiary in Butner, N.C., that specializes in inmates with psychiatric problems.

After Wachtler pleaded guilty to threatening to kidnap the daughter of his ex-lover, he asked for leniency, blaming the bizarre scheme and his criminal behavior on a psychiatric illness exacerbated by prescription drug abuse.

At the sentencing Sept. 9, U.S. District Judge Anne Thomspson rejected Wachtler’s request for a lighter sentence but agreed to ask the Bureau of Prisons to allow the 62-year-old defendant to serve his term at Eglin Air Force Base in Ft. Walton Beach, Fla., in a prison farm near the Florida home of his 91-year-old mother. The judge sentenced him to 15 months in prison.

Federal prison officials, however, would not discuss the reasons behind the decision to send Wachtler to the North Carolina institution.