County DA pleased with doc's plea

<p>Sonoma County's district attorney is pleased with a recent plea agreement involving an East Bay oncologist who was arrested during an underage sex sting in Petaluma in 2006, and praised the work of two people, in particular.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>“(Deputy District Attorney) Brian Staebell did an outstanding job in prosecuting the case and Lt. Matt Stapleton of the Petaluma Police Department did an outstanding job of putting the case together for us. At the end of the day, justice prevailed,” said Stephan Passalacqua, regarding the plea arrangement for Dr. Maurice Wolin that was announced last week.</p><p>Stapleton, in turn, praised the way the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office handled the Wolin case.</p><p>“The DA's office did an awesome job in supporting us,” he said.</p><p>Stapleton, who oversaw the operation, also is pleased with the terms of the agreement — Wolin now will serve up to 90 days in Sonoma County Jail, need to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, could lose his medical license and since he pleaded to a “strike” felony, could have penalties enhanced for any future crimes.</p><p>“Obviously, this was a good outcome, and it is what we anticipated,” Stapleton said. </p><p>Concerns were raised that Wolin might receive too light of a sentence, particularly because of his ability to pay for expensive legal fees, including the services of high-profile Los Angeles attorney Blair Berk.</p><p>“But Wolin's disposition was not inconsistent with that of any of the other defendants,” Stapleton said.</p><p>Some of the other 28 men arrested in the sting were given probation sentences, and others were sentenced up to nine months in state prison. Two of the men were given state-prison sentences because they had previous offenses. All but one of them will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of their lives. </p><p>After more than three years of legal wrangling, last week Wolin pleaded no contest to a felony charge stemming from the sex sting at a Petaluma home. The plea agreement was approved by Sonoma County Judge Arthur Wick. The case was scheduled to go to trial in January, and Wolin could have been given a four-year state prison sentence if convicted of the charge for which he was arrested — attempted lewd conduct with a child under 14 years old. </p><p>Wick will read probation reports about Wolin before sentencing him on Feb. 26.</p><p>Wolin was arrested along with the other men at a home on Castle Drive on Aug. 25-27, 2006 in an operation conducted by the Petaluma Police Department, the online watchdog group Perverted Justice and the Dateline NBC-TV show, “To Catch a Predator.” The men previously had chatted online with a decoy pretending to be a 13-year-old girl, and subsequently made arrangements to meet “her” at the home.</p><p>“Wolin's dialogue (with the decoy) was on the more disturbing side, compared with the other men arrested. He absolutely believed he was coming to Petaluma to have sex with a child,” Stapleton said.</p><p>After being arrested, Wolin hired Berk to represent him. She was successful in obtaining a legal ruling that statements made by Wolin to police after he was arrested could not be used against him in court, but unsuccessful in getting the case dismissed on the grounds that the hard drive containing chats between Wolin and the decoy had crashed.</p><p>Wick ruled that the crash did not hurt the defense's case, because the communications were recorded on a proxy server. He also determined that prosecutors' failure to disclose at a preliminary hearing that the computer hard drive was lost did not violate Wolin's rights.</p><p>Passalacqua emphasized the ongoing dangers posed by sexual predators on the Internet.</p><p>“The Internet provides a new criminal practice for predators, because of the anonymity, but law-enforcement people are working together to prevent what they are doing,” he said.</p><p>(Contact Dan Johnson at dan.johnson@arguscourier.com)</p>