I’ve written about the case of former University of Pennsylvania professor Tracy McIntosh several times before. Dr McIntosh was a highly respected medical researcher and director of Penn’s prestigious Head Injury Research Center. He is also a rapist.
A friend of Dr McIntosh’s, a friend, mind you, asked this trusted and respected professor to show his niece, a 23 year old incoming graduate student, around the Ivy League school’s campus. Dr McIntosh and the lady wound up drinking, and, after taking her back to his college office, he gave her marijuana and she passed out;¹ he then raped her.
The District Attorney prosecuted the case, and after a plea bargain in which Dr McIntosh was allowed to plead no contest to a reduced set of charges, and the prosecution asked for a sentence of 5½ to 11 years, Judge Means sentenced the rapist to 11½ to 23 months — of house arrest!
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham complained, then appealled the sentence, and a 2½ year legal battle has ensued; Mrs Abraham asked Judge Means to recuse himself, and he wouldn’t. She then appealled and got a superior court ruliong that Dr McIntosh be resentenced by another judge, but the state Supreme Court ruled that he should be resentenced by Judge Means.
Judge Means has, finally!, recused himself, not because he thinks his original sentence was wrong, but because he says that he has become the issue.
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Judge is off case of Penn professor²
Rayford Means disqualified himself from resentencing Tracy McIntosh for a sexual assault on a grad student.
By Joseph A. Slobodzian, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
Criticizing news coverage but conceding, “I have become the issue,” Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford A. Means yesterday disqualified himself from resentencing former University of Pennsylvania professor Tracy McIntosh in a 2002 sexual assault on a Penn graduate student.
“This case will get a fresh start,” Means said shortly before ending what was to have been a resentencing ordered by state appeals courts.
McIntosh, 54, of Media, pleaded no contest to sexual assault in a Sept. 6, 2002 incident in his Penn office involving a 23-year-old graduate student, the niece of his friend and former college roommate.
Judge Means said a factor in his sentencing decision was the societal value of McIntosh’s research on treating brain injury at Penn. Then Judge Means allowed Dr McIntosh, then supposedly on house arrest, to fly to Italy for a six-month research appointment at a Milan medical facility.
The 11½ to 23 months of hhouse arrest? Court documents indicated that Judge Means had already removed Dr McIntosh from electronic monitoring in his home on November 17, 2005, meaning that he had served only 8½ months of house arrest.
Every time I think about this case, I’ve had to wonder: did money change hands here? Lynne Abraham is not a District Attorney to be trifled with, and it is inconceivable that her office did not investigate that possibility, but there has been no indication made public that I have heard showing any evidence of such.
This case is so strange that I have a hard time getting my arms around it. Unless there was money involved, Judge Means should have stepped aside when first questioned about it, for the reasons he gave now: he was becoming the issue, but there is no (known) evidence that money changed hands. Judge Means might have gotten his feelings hurt, but he only damaged his reputation further by his persistance.
Nor can I imagine how an educated man like Judge Means could ever have thought that a house arrest sentence would be acceptable for a rapist. Yeah, Dr McIntosh had money, and yeah, he had a great reputation, and yeah, he apparently did some good for society, but none of that excuses the fact that he raped a woman.
At any rate, it appears that, at long last, Dr McIntosh will wind up where he belongs: behind bars.
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¹ – The nornal suspicion here is that some form of “date rape” drug was used, and a lawsuit against Dr McIntosh and Penn alleged that he used a date-rape drug, but I haven’t seen that part proven.
² – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Saturday, 8 September 2007, p. B-1
So did Slick Willie, and he’s walking around scot-free.
How about the ability of Dr. (“Double-O”) Swango to indulge in serial murder on at least two continents? He played the ‘professional courtesy’ racket to the hilt. Suspious nurses were rarely taken seriously. Perhaps they simply were ‘not qualified’.
The latter term should be read in the sprit of its use in the Monty Python documentary The Meaning of Life.
[...] I’ve written about the case of Dr McIntosh, who pleaded no contest to a sexual assault charge in 2005 — and was sentenced to house arrest by Judge Rayford Means. (See this, this, this, this, this, and this). The former University of Pennsylvania professor and director of Penn’s Head Injury Research Center had pleaded no contest to the sexual assault of a 23-year-old student, in which he had gotten her drunk, used what prosecutors claimed was a veterinary sedative and then gave her marijuana for the nausea she suffered, and then raped her. To compound the case, the victim was the niece of one of Dr McIntosh’s friends, who had asked him to show her, a prospective grad student, around the campus. [...]