U.S. Second Circuit Judge Denny Chin. Photo: David Handschuh/NYLJ

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has tossed the conviction of a 25-year-old member of the U.S. Air Force who pleaded guilty to traveling across state lines to have sex with a 14-year-old girl.

It was a case in which the court found prosecutors overreached in hammering out a plea deal, and the U.S. District Court erred in accepting.

The three-judge panel, in its 37-page ruling in United States v. Murphy, found defendant Nicholas Murphy should never have been allowed to accept a plea deal because the girl had told Murphy she was 16 years old—the age of sexual consent in Connecticut—when she was actually 14.

Murphy too had lied about his age. He'd told the teenage girl he was 19 years old. Court records show he'd traveled from Rhode Island to Plainfield, Connecticut, to have sex with the girl on at least one occasion in 2015, which led to his conviction in 2017, and landed him in prison for five years.

The federal appellate court reversed that conviction.

The panel found Murphy's lying about his age was not a crime, and that he should not be punished for the girl lying about hers.

"The district court plainly erred in accepting the plea," Judge Denny Chin wrote for the majority. "The errors prejudicially affected Murphy's substantial rights. There is a reasonable probability that, but for the errors, the defendant would not have entered the plea."

For its part, the government pointed out that Murphy stated in accepting the plea deal that the victim "was underage" and that he "should have known better," the ruling noted. But Murphy's statements to prosecutors created a moral issue, not a legal one, the appellate panel found.

"These statements do not support the government's contention that Murphy pleaded guilty to facts consistent with the crime of traveling interstate for the purpose of having sex with someone under the age of 16," Chin wrote. "They may merely evidence Murphy's sense of moral culpability, which is understandable given that Murphy lied about his age and has sex under cover of night with someone he thought was a 16-year-old, almost 10 years his junior. None of this, however, changes the reality that the facts Murphy pleaded to are not actually criminal under his crime of conviction."

The panel noted another misstep.

"Murphy did not understand the nature of the crime with which he was charged," Chin wrote. "This strikes at the heart of the fairness, integrity and public reputation of judicial proceedings."

Representing Murphy is Garden City, New York, solo practitioner Matthew Brissenden.

"The court decision provides valuable clarification regarding the reach of 18 U.S. Code 2423(b)," Brissenden said, referring to the federal law that deals with traveling across state lines for illicit sex.

Representing the government were Connecticut Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sarah Karwan and Marc Silverman. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, Thomas Carson, declined to comment on the prosecutors' behalf.