Prosecutors continue efforts to send former Penn professor Tracy McIntosh to prison, but McIntosh's lawyers now argue that a previous backroom deal proposed by the case's former prosecutor should keep him from serving time.
McIntosh, 54, is a former Neurosurgery professor who pleaded no contest to the Sept. 6, 2002, sexual assault of his college roommate's niece, a 23-year-old woman who was about to enter Penn's veterinary school.
At a hearing Friday in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Joel Trigiani, one of McIntosh's lawyers, asserted that an off-the-record, in-chambers deal had been made between McIntosh's former defense lawyers, former prosecutor Gina Maisto Smith and Common Pleas Judge Rayford Means.
That deal, Trigiani said, stated that McIntosh would stay out of prison in exchange for admitting to the assault, and Trigiani argued that the case's new judge, Common Pleas Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe, should reimpose the house-arrest sentence originally given to McIntosh.
The deal was purportedly made when McIntosh entered his no-contest plea on Dec. 1, 2004.
Trigiani requested a hearing in which he planned to call as witnesses former McIntosh lawyers Thomas Bergstrom and Arthur Donato and Judge Means to testify that the deal existed.
Dembe denied the request at Friday's hearing. She acknowledged that lawyers may have reached "some sort of informal understanding with the judge" but added that "the record is clear that there is no formal agreement."
Dembe - who is handling the sentencing after Means recused himself from the case Sept. 7 - said McIntosh can now either prepare for his court-mandated resentencing or withdraw his plea and go to trial.
The defense will inform Dembe of its decision at another hearing scheduled for Sept. 28.
McIntosh appeared in court Friday but did not speak.
Prosecutors deny that any plea-bargain agreement was made.
"There simply was no deal," Assistant District Attorney Richard DeSipio said. He also refuted Trigiani's assertion that "deals are made all the time."
Deborah Harley Tierney, chief of the District Attorney's Family Violence and Sexual Assault Unit, echoed DeSipio's words, saying after the hearing that, even off the record, "there was no deal."
Tierney said that, had a deal existed, McIntosh would have been sentenced at the time of his plea.
In March 2005, prosecutors publicly asked for a sentence of at least 5 1/2 years in prison, but Means instead gave McIntosh 11 1/2 to 23 months of house arrest, eight years probation and $40,000 in fines and restitution to the victim.
Means said the lighter sentence came partially because of McIntosh's status as a preeminent researcher, and the District Attorney's office appealed the sentence, saying Means appeared to believe McIntosh was "too important for prison."
The state Superior Court ordered McIntosh to be resentenced last November, and the state Supreme Court affirmed the resentencing order in April.
McIntosh and the University also reached separate, confidential civil-suit agreements with the victim in January.
