Rosario re-sentenced on old charges, but attorney asks for reconsideration
As Keith Rosario awaits sentencing for a botched execution and related charges, an attorney acting on his behalf has asked a Washington County judge to reconsider a sentence re-imposed last month on the defendant for drug trafficking.
Rosario’s court-appointed attorney, Herbert Terrell, in a document filed with the court, called the re-sentence “manifestly excessive” and “too severe a punishment.”
Rosario, 28, of Washington, originally was given 2 ½ to 5 years incarceration for carrying a firearm without a license, credit for time served, and probation for two felonies: delivery of cocaine and delivery of marijuana.
He was released from custody in May 2017 but was monitored at a halfway house for two months.
In September 2017, Rosario was charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, kidnapping, conspiracy and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.
Last month, a jury convicted Rosario of each offense, but entered no verdict on the firearms charge. Judge Valarie Costanzo has scheduled his sentencing in May.
Terrell claims that Rosario had not, until the jury’s conviction, considered a violent offender. He also noted that although Assistant District Attorney Jason Walsh said that drugs were involved in the attempted homicide, “the district attorney’s verbal statements in argument should not have been construed as evidence of the record in the new criminal case.”
Judge John DiSalle on Feb. 21 re-sentenced Rosario on carrying a firearm and the drug trafficking charges, revoking the balance of the sentence on the unlicensed firearm charge subject to the action of the state Board of Probation and Parole.
For the cocaine trafficking charge, DiSalle sentenced Rosario to five to 10 years and for the marijuana charge, consecutive probation for five years.
Terrell, claims DiSalle failed to adequately state the reasons for the re-sentencing and raised the Double Jeopardy clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.
The court, not the parole board, should have reviewed credit for time spent in custody as a result of both the original charge and any subsequent charge for the same offense or for another offense based on the same act or acts, according to Terrell.
“The record suggests that the court imposed two separate sentences on Mr. Rosario for a single crime,” Terrell wrote.
At his recent trial, prosecutors said that 28-year-old Keith Rosario – accompanied by two other people who testified against him – abducted 32-year-old Marcus Stancik and drove him to Cove Road before Rosario took him to the shore of a former reservoir, forced him to his knees and shot him in the base of his head Sept. 5, 2017.
Stancik claims he was wrongly accused of stealing a gun, but admitted that he was working for Rosario’s co-defendant delivering illegal drugs.
Rosario is being held in the State Correctional Institution at Greene County.