Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : COURTS : Moriarty’s Sentence Cut to 5 Years at Prosecutor’s Request

It was like a scene from the “Twilight Zone”: a federal prosecutor begging a judge to order the man he had successfully prosecuted released from prison years early.

The inmate was W. Patrick Moriarty, the former Anaheim fireworks magnate who had been convicted as a political corrupter.

Sentenced to seven years in prison by U.S. District Court Judge William J. Rea, Moriarty was back in court, and his prosecutor, Chief Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard E. Drooyan, was pleading with the judge to cut the sentence in half.

But the judge was more than reluctant; he was angry.

The prosecutor was asking the court to “go easy” on Moriarty “because he’s helped convict some of the people he bribed,” Rea complained. “If this is what it has come to in this country, then God help us all,” he said.

Drooyan argued that since Moriarty had testified in the successful corruption convictions of three former California politicians--former Norwalk Assemblyman Bruce E. Young, Long Beach City Councilman James Wilson and City Councilman Walter (Jake) Egan of Carson--he should be rewarded.

“Over the last two years, I’ve come to know Mr. Moriarty as well as anybody,” Drooyan said. “He is a gregarious, likable individual.

“I think incarceration has taught him some lessons. If there is no reduction in this case, it will severely impact the government’s ability to proceed in this investigation.”

But the judge complained that the prosecutor had put him in “an awful position.”

He said he had considered Moriarty’s past and future cooperation when he imposed the original light sentence.

“I’m here, I guess, representing the general population,” Rea said. “What does the public want? Do they expect the court to protect them against people like Moriarty undermining the very fabric of our society? How do we stop them? Not by letting them off easy.”

But at the end of the heated, hourlong debate, Rea agreed to reduce the sentence to five years.

By that time, several of Moriarty’s children were in tears, and soon afterwards Moriarty’s wife collapsed in a courthouse corridor, but was revived by smelling salts.

The reduction means Moriarty could be released in 11 months.