LOCKPORT — A weary-looking Nicholas D’Angelo walked into the Niagara County courthouse just before 2 p.m. Friday and glanced at the reporter entering with him.
“How are you,” the reporter asked.
“I’m just glad to get this over with,” D’Angelo replied.
The former Niagara Falls attorney was about to be sentenced for his guilty plea in an attempted election fraud case that was tied to an earlier rape and sex abuse case.
D’Angelo had pleaded guilty to an E felony charge of first-degree attempted tampering with public records.
While the charge carried a possible prison term of 1 1/2 to 4 years behind bars, Erie County-based State Supreme Court Justice Debra Givens, who presided over both of D’Angelo’s cases, said she was limited in her sentencing options.
D’Angelo, 32, is currently serving a 10-year sex offender probation sentence as a result of his previous guilty plea, in April 2023, to four counts of first-degree sexual abuse, two counts of third-degree criminal sexual act and two counts of third-degree rape in a plea deal with special prosecutors from the Erie County District Attorney’s Office.
Before starting his sex offender probation, D’Angelo had served a six-month term of incarceration at the Niagara County jail for his guilty pleas.
But as a result of the sex offense conviction sentence, state law barred Givens from handing down a significant prison term in the election fraud case.
“I would have liked to push for a more serious prison term, but to do so, in this case, would have “satisfied” the probation sentence in his sex offense case by operation of (state) law,” District Attorney Brian Seaman said in explaining the judge’s dilemma. “Even a short prison sentence would have had the effect of relieving the defendant of sex offender probation.”
To maintain her probation sentence, Givens ordered D’Angelo to serve six months of weekends in jail for the election fraud conviction. He began his weekend jail stays at 5 p.m. Friday.
Givens said if D’Angelo serves the sentence with “no problems,” she will “terminate it at four months.”
D’Angelo had faced an indictment that charged him with multiple felony and misdemeanor counts following a New York State Police Special Investigations Unit (SIU) probe that determined “D’Angelo forged records and used a victim’s identity to make a false campaign contribution.”
The Gazette has confirmed that the identity theft victim was the husband of D’Angelo’s sex crimes case special prosecutor, Erie County Assistant District Attorney Lynette Reda. The alleged fraud was uncovered by campaign officials working on the 2021 election of City Court Judge Janelle Faso, who said they discovered what appeared to be a mailed election contribution from Sam Reda.
Assistant Niagara County District Attorney Robert Zucco, who prosecuted the election fraud case, said D’Angelo “used his legal experience to devise a scheme to embarrass (the special prosecutor) to have (her) removed from the (sex crimes) case.”
“He has no qualms about friendship or loyalty when his own self-interest is concerned,” Zucco said.
D’Angelo’s defense attorney, Eric Soehnlein, told Givens that his client was “not disputing what he did.
“Mr. D’Angelo has well-documented mental and emotional health issues,” Soehnlein said. “Particularly impulse control issues with he is under stress.”
Soehnlein said D’Angelo is currently being successfully treated for those issues and “is a very different person today than when this started. He’s remorseful for what he’s done.”
Givens also noted that a pre-sentence report on D’Angelo, complied by Niagara County probation officers, “finally provides an explanation for what he did.” But the judge never revealed what the “explanation” was.
In his first comments in court, beyond yes and no answers or guilty pleas, D’Angelo told the judge he had previously stayed “mostly silent out of anger and admittedly, my narcissism.” He said his sentences were “an opportunity” to “put in the work” to become “a better person, a moral person, who does not cause the same pain and suffering I have caused my victims.”
In addition to D’Angelo’s intermittent jail term and sex offender probation sentences, Givens has also designated him as a Level 3 sex offender, with a special designation as a “violent sexual offender.” The risk level 3 designation means an offender is at a high risk to re-offend and a threat to public safety.
D’Angelo had a previous sex offense conviction in 2009 while he was a student at Niagara Falls High School. However, he was given youthful offender status in that case and the record of those proceedings has been sealed.
He served a term of probation for his conviction in that case.
Givens has warned D’Angelo that if he violates the terms of his sex offender probation, she will re-sentence him to up to 44 years in prison.
D’Angelo was charged in November 2020 in a 12-count indictment that accused him of multiple rapes and sex crimes, one of which involved an underage girl. He pleaded guilty to a superseding 8-count indictment.