Former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez was spared a prison sentence as he pleaded guilty Thursday to bribe receiving and first-degree larceny by extortion, according to a published report.
Perez’s plea deal, which was not yet available from Hartford Superior Court, resulted in an eight-year suspended sentence and a conditional discharge from Superior Court Judge Julia D. Dewey, according to the Hartford Courant, which first reported the court sentencing.
Perez, who was Hartford city mayor from 2001 to June 2010, was convicted of bribe receiving, fabricating evidence and larceny by extortion for actions he had taken while in office.
The charges stemmed from allegations that Perez accepted home improvements from a city contractor in return for keeping him on a multimillion-dollar construction project, among other things.
In 2012, Perez was sentenced to three years in prison, but the sentence was overturned last year when the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the former Democratic mayor is entitled to two new trials because a lower court erred in not separating the charges on which he was convicted.
Supreme Court Justice Richard Palmer said in his 2016 ruling that Perez should have been given two trials because he wanted to testify about the bribery charges against him but he wanted to use his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination on the extortion charges.
Perez’s lawyer, Hartford attorney Hubert J. Santos, could not be reached immediately for comment.
