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Map Thief Gets Three-and-a-Half YearsA federal judge in New Haven, Connecticut, sentenced convicted map thief E. Forbes Smiley III to 42 months in prison September 27, despite requests from victimized libraries for a much sterner punishment. Smiley, a Massachusetts map dealer who has admitted stealing 98 rare maps from seven repositories in the United States and England, must also pay $1.9 million in restitution to antiquarian booksellers and collectors he defrauded, the Martha’s Vineyard (Mass.) Gazette reported September 29.U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton said she was following a recommendation by prosecutors for a lenient sentence based on Smiley’s cooperation in recovering nearly all the stolen maps. “If you steal human treasures, then you will go to prison,” Arterton said during sentencing, “but if you help recover them, this will be taken into account and weighed in the balance.” Federal guidelines recommend a sentence of between 57 and 71 months in prison for crimes of this class. Smiley will undergo three years of supervised parole after his release from prison, which can occur no earlier than January 2010, even with good behavior, U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor said after the sentencing. Arterton also ordered Smiley to tell any antiquarians he comes into contact with about his felony conviction, the Gazette reported. He must report to prison January 4. Smiley is scheduled for sentencing in Connecticut superior court October 13 on three felony larceny counts stemming from the theft of three rare documents from Yale University. Clive Field, the British Library’s director of scholarship and collections, expressed his disappointment in the lenient sentence in the September 28 London Times, adding, “It will go down in criminal and library history as one of the largest, most prolonged, premeditated, and systematic of all thefts from libraries, and with no mitigating circumstances.” Northwestern University Curator of Special Collections R. Russell Maylone said in the September 27 Hartford (Conn.) Courant that because of Smiley’s thievery, “policies of access will now change, more institutions will now have security cameras and guards, collectors who might have become friends of institutions will now shy away, and most of us will trust all a good deal less.” Posted September 29, 2006. |
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