Defense cites PTSD in appeal for lower sentence
While Kealty faced a maximum penalty of life in prison, under federal sentencing guidelines for someone like him with no criminal record, the range was 10 years behind bars to 11 years and three months, court records show.
Knox sought the full 135 months for “grooming” the girl for nearly six months and “ultimately persuading her to produce child sexual abuse material for his benefit,” she wrote in her sentencing memo.
The prosecutor pointed out that as a detective, Kealty had “worked” every type of case, including sex crimes against both adults and children.
Kealty “was sworn to protect the community and bring perpetrators of heinous crime to justice. Instead, he became a perpetrator himself, betraying his oath, his badge, and his community by exploiting the very people he was sworn to protect,” she wrote.
She asked Judge Andrews to pronounce a sentence to “reflect the seriousness of the offense, send a strong message, and promote respect for the law; and the need for just punishment.”
Kealty’s wife, parents, siblings, neighbors and friends countered in letters to the judge that despite his crime, he was a decent man who deserved leniency. Spodek included those pleas in his sentencing memo, and also argued that his client suffered from previously undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder that led to porn addiction that ultimately fixated on children.
Kealty’s mental issues, the lawyer wrote, stemmed from watching an Army “buddy” suffer severe injuries in an explosion and from work as a detective.
“Michael Kealty was living a double life,” Spodek wrote to Judge Andrews while seeking the minimum sentence. “His loved ones saw one version of him, an idealized version: a patriot, a distinguished soldier and police officer/detective, a family man, and a man of faith.”
“Secretly, he was struggling immensely with trauma, insecurities, and addiction. Regrettably, Michael relied on a combination of pornography and risk-seeking to self-medicate instead of seeking professional help or alerting the people in his life,” Spodek wrote.
Spodek included multiple citations Kealty had won during his policing career, including one from former Attorney General Matt Denn’s office for excelling at the 2017 police academy, and the award as top Smyrna cop.
He also portrayed Kealty as a model prisoner who has earned several certificates, such as for “successfully living with a co-occurring disorder.”
Judge Andrews sided with Spodek’s proposal, and gave Kealty a 10-year sentence this month.
Spodek told WHYY News the sentence was appropriate, despite his client’s “reprehensible” conduct.
“It’s important to realize in cases like this where you have an individual who by all accounts was living a law-abiding life and then went down a path of very destructive behavior, you have to backtrack and try and analyze what happened,” he said. “Kealty, by all accounts, was suffering from an undiagnosed and untreated PTSD diagnosis along with some other destructive behaviors, and I believe that the confluence of events led him down this unfortunate cycle and led him down to the path of sending and receiving these images.”
Knox saw it differently, though.
“Michael Kealty had everything: a stable career, loving parents, a loving wife, a newborn son, and a home,” she told the judge. “And instead of cherishing these things and being grateful for his fortune in life, he took to the internet to unleash his frustrations with life on young girls.”
