Former Penn professor Tracy McIntosh may have to serve two sentences for the same crime.
The Philadelphia District Attorney's office argued before a Pennsylvania Superior Court panel Monday, requesting that McIntosh be resentenced by a different judge for his sexual-assault conviction.
Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford Means sentenced McIntosh to 11 to 23 months of house arrest in December of 2004 after McIntosh pleaded no contest to the crime.
McIntosh, 52, was charged with sexually assaulting the 23-year-old niece of a good friend in his Hayden Hall office in 2002 after the two had spent the evening visiting several bars on Penn's campus.
Assistant District Attorney Chris Mallios said that Judge Means gave McIntosh a lenient sentence because of the professor's fame in the field of neurosurgery research, a privilege that other people would not have received.
McIntosh's lawyer, Thomas Bergstrom, could not be reached for comment.
Sentencing guidelines dictate a minimum of four to six years of jail time for an offense like McIntosh's, but Mallios said that even a "mitigated sentence" -- in which a judge accounts for outstanding circumstances -- would have required McIntosh to spend at least two to three years in prison.
Penn officials requested McIntosh's resignation after his plea and conviction. The University has had no contact with him since.
McIntosh is still on probation, although Means permitted him to travel to Italy in January to take a research position at a Milan hospital. He returned to Philadelphia weeks later after hospital officials revoked his contract, saying they were not aware of his conviction.
Ultimately, McIntosh only served six months of his sentence.
The Office of the District Attorney said that neither Means nor McIntosh contacted city officials about McIntosh's intention to travel abroad.
Bergstrom has said in the past that it has been difficult for his client to pay the thousands of dollars of restitution he owes -- $20,000 in fines and an additional $20,000 in treatment for the victim -- because he cannot find work.
