Following sentencing proceedings that presented a challenge for U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York, the judge sentenced a former state assemblywoman from Brooklyn convicted of bilking thousands of dollars from various entities to six months in prison.

Weinstein, who has been known to mete out unexpected if not unorthodox sentences in some cases, announced the sentence for Pamela Harris on Thursday, almost two weeks after a 90-minute sentencing hearing that ended with the judge saying he would need more time to determine Harris' fate.

Weinstein, who said the Harris case presented “complicated and difficult” sentencing issues, had scheduled another sentencing hearing for Oct. 17 but postponed the hearing to Thursday.

Harris, who resigned from the Assembly in April, pleaded guilty in June to wire fraud, witness tampering and making false statements to the Federal Emergency Management Administration for taking part in various fraud schemes from 2012 to 2017 that included falsely claiming to FEMA that her house in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn was ravaged by Superstorm Sandy.

Prosecutors said Harris should be given 33 to 41 months in prison, but the judge said that range would be too severe.

To determine a proper punishment for Harris, Weinstein said he needed to balance the severity and duration of her offenses and the need to hold a former elected official accountable for unethical behavior with the fact that Harris won elected office while bearing the “psychic scars of her dreadful past.”

Harris grew up in Coney Island with an abusive mother and never knew her biological father, the judge explained. She left the family home as a teenager and dropped out of high school.

Harris had her first and only child when she was 18 years old and the child died in her sleep when Harris was 23, which caused her to spiral. She began living on the street, working as a prostitute to support her drug habit.

But Weinstein said Harris has a “remarkable capacity to rehabilitate herself.” She got into rehab and later began working for the New York City Department of Correction as a guard on Rikers Island, where she took a brutal beating from an adolescent inmate.

Harris forged ahead with her studies, earning her GED in 1995 and working her way up to master's degree by 2013. Through those years she worked with Coney Island's disadvantaged youth and, in 2007, formed Coney Island Generation Gap, a not-for-profit that funds youth programs.

In 2015, when she was elected to represent the Assembly district that covers Coney Island, Bay Ridge and other South Brooklyn neighborhoods, she became the first African-American in New York City history to represent a majority-white district.

But starting in 2012, the judge said, Harris began a pattern “deliberate and calculated criminal behavior” in which she defrauded money allocated for “vulnerable members of society.”

In addition to the scheme to defraud FEMA for $24,800 by falsely submitting to the agency that she had to move to Staten Island while she was still living in Coney Island, Harris stole $46,500 in city funds allocated to her nonprofit and hid $10,000 from a bankruptcy creditor, Weinstein said.

Additionally, when she became aware in 2016 that she was under investigation, Harris told her relatives to lie to FBI agents about living on Staten Island.

“Harris repeatedly lied and submitted forged documents to divert public funds reserved for youth and disaster victims into her own pocket,” Weinstein said in his 28-page ruling. “She stole from the children she was supposed to be protecting. She stole from natural disaster victims. When the government focused on her various schemes to defraud, she took advantage of those closest to her by convincing them to lie.”

The judge expressed concern about Harris' ability to be rehabilitated in prison and noted that she did not use her official office in the commission of her offenses, but said that Harris has “contributed to the erosion of the public's faith in government” and that allowing her to walk away without jail time would “send a wrong message to the community.”   

In addition to her sentence, Weinstein ordered 400 hours of community service and restitution paid to FEMA and the city government for the stolen funds.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Erik Paulsen and Robert Polemeni prosecuted the case; Harris was defended by Joel Cohen and Jerry Goldfeder of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan.

“While any sentence of incarceration is painful, we are grateful for Judge Weinstein's thoughtful and fair consideration of all the relevant factors in this case,” Cohen said in a statement.   

Like others on the federal bench, Weinstein opposes mandatory minimum sentences and often departs from federal sentencing guidelines; he is known for using his sentencing rulings to address broader issues in criminal justice.  

In 2016, for example, Weinstein refused to give a 10-year mandatory sentence to a man convicted of felony drug distribution who had a prior civil traffic offense on his record.

Earlier this year, Weinstein faulted himself and other judges for taking a heavy-handed approach to marijuana offenses, ruling that a man's pot-smoking habit should not be grounds to revoke his supervised release.