It’s one year jail for Kenneth Moreno.
The lead officer in the notorious “Rape Cop” case was slammed with a stiff Rikers sentence yesterday, after prosecutors called him a corrupt liar who thought he was “above the law” on the night he and his partner made three caught-on-video return visits to the East Village apartment of an intoxicated young fashion executive.
Moreno’s actions as a police officer “rip[ped] at that fabric that holds us all together,” an angry Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro told the ex-cop, glaring at him from the bench.
“You, sir, ripped a gaping hole in that fabric in committing those crimes,” Carro told him.
The judge also blasted Moreno for giving jurors an “incredible” story while on the stand in April — in which he insisted that he’d had only chivalrous intentions in “counseling” and “spooning” in bed with the semi-nude, vomiting woman.
“Now it’s certainly not illegal to take advantage of an intoxicated woman, but it is a crime when you do it and you are a police officer in uniform and supposed to be on duty,” the judge said.
“That is official misconduct. That is clear.”
The woman at the center of the case wrinkled her brow and sobbed from the front row as the business-suited Moreno was allowed to walk, uncuffed, to a courtroom holding pen.
Her request to make a victim statement during the proceeding was denied by the judge, after defense lawyers argued that since Moreno and his co-defendant were acquitted of rape and burglary, the woman is not legally a victim.
A second, higher-ranking judge ruled later in the day that the disgraced ex-cop can remain free pending appeal.
Moreno had already taken a city correction bus to Rikers Island by the time the news reached him.
“He’s not going anywhere,” defense lawyer Chad Seigel told Manhattan Appellate Division Judge Nelson Roman, in arguing that Moreno — who has no prior record, perfect court attendance and who lives in Brooklyn with his parents, wife and two kids — should be sprung.
Moreno must return to court Sept. 12 so a trial can be set for a small stash of seized heroin recovered from a police locker he had shared with another officer.
The sentencing for Moreno’s co-defendant, Franklin Mata, was delayed until Wednesday morning due to an attorney scheduling matter.
Moreno and Mata had been convicted in May of three counts each of official misconduct for their three return visits to the woman’s East Village apartment on a December night in 2008.
The woman was so intoxicated that the pair had been dispatched to help her out of a cab, and she had tearfully testified to jurors that Moreno raped her as she lay stripped and semi-conscious on her bed.