Controversial Sled murder judge off criminal bench

Carolyn Temin, who sentenced Bridgette Black to five to 12 years in jail, had been derided as lenient. The Philadelphia homicide judge whose controversial sentencing of the confessed killer of University biochemist Vladimir Sled led to her being derided by a local newspaper columnist as "the Queen of Murder Lite" was re-assigned yesterday, ending her rocky 15-year tenure on the criminal court bench. Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Engel Temin, 64, will be transferred to the court's civil division in January, court administrators announced yesterday. On July 29, Temin sentenced confessed Sled killer Bridgette Black to five to 12 years in prison, sparking a series of columns by Dan Geringer of the Philadelphia Daily News in which he described Temin as a judge who doesn't take murder seriously and takes the defendant's side in every case. The paper broke the story of Temin's transfer yesterday. Geringer said last night that it was the Sled case that initially attracted his attention, and then he found similar cases. He said sources have told him that his columns played a role in the decision to transfer Temin. "It was a particularly horrendous case," he said. "I had never heard of a sentence like that before. All the human emotions that you'd think the judge would have for the victim or the family of the victim, she was assigning to this person who had just wantonly murdered Mr. Sled." Others defended the trial court veteran. "The newspaper coverage was mean-spirited and was a great disservice to a jurist with an exemplary career," said Mark Aronchick, the chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association and a 1971 Penn graduate. Through her secretary, Temin declined to comment yesterday and referred calls to Aronchick. While the job change is not exactly a demotion for the judge, it does remove her from the position that made her perhaps the most powerful murder judge in the city. As the homicide calendar judge, she assigned all homicide cases and was able to preside over sentencing hearings for defendants who pleaded guilty. One such person was Black, 27, who confessed two years ago to stabbing Sled, a 38-year-old Russian-born scientist, on Halloween night in 1996. After testifying against her two co-defendants, Eugene "Sultan" Harrison and Yvette Stewart, Black pleaded guilty to a general charge of murder. Temin convicted her of third-degree murder and sentenced her on July 29 to five to 12 years, well below the state guidelines of 20 to 40 years. Harrison was acquitted of the murder charge but convicted of robbery, and was sentenced by a different judge to seven to 14 years in prison. A different jury found Stewart guilty of third-degree murder, and she was sentenced to 15 to 30 years, but Judge James Lineberger agreed to re-consider it in light of Black's much shorter sentence. Lineberger is scheduled to re-sentence Stewart next week. At Black's sentencing, Temin seized upon the confessed killer's troubled upbringing and the drug habit which drove her to a life of prostitution, and ultimately murder. Geringer charges that Temin ignored the pain of Sled's family, including his fiancee at the time of his murder, then-University researcher Cecilia Hagerhall. But public defender Fred Goodman, who represented Black, said Geringer greatly oversimplified matters to make his point. "The Daily News managed to take what both Judge Temin and the prosecutors called one of the most complicated cases that either of them had seen in their careers and simplify it into an unjustified emotional attack on the judge," Goodman said. Hagerhall, however, was thrilled with the news, telling Geringer for his column yesterday that the decision is "a relief that people don't have to suffer from this woman anymore. It's really a relief for future families of murder victims."