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A top Virginia prosecutor sought jail time for the dad who was arrested at a school board meeting while protesting his daughter’s rape — despite having run on a George Soros-funded campaign against mass incarcerations, according to reports.
Bronx-raised Loudoun County Commonwealth Attorney Buta Biberaj personally prosecuted dad Scott Smith, 48, after he was arrested at a raucous June 22 public meeting, Loudoun Now noted at the time.
The county’s top prosecutor pushed for jail time as well as a fine and anger management for Smith, even though he was only facing misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest — and his lawyer insisted he had been illegally detained, the court report said.
Smith’s attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster, told the Daily Wire that it was “completely unheard of for the prosecutor to handle a misdemeanor.”
“It is incredibly unusual for a disorderly conduct case to even go forward. The idea that they would actually be seeking jail time, I’d guess in my 15 years the number of times I’ve seen that happen would be zero,” Lancaster told the conservative outlet.
The request for harsh punishment also appears to be at odds with Biberaj’s long campaign against mass incarceration — helping her get elected in 2019, the Washington Post noted at the time.
That particularly applied to school-age children, including the 14-year-old charged with attacking Smith’s daughter in May.
Despite facing charges including forcible sodomy, the boy was only made to wear an ankle monitor and move to a different school — where earlier this month he was accused of a similar sex attack on another pupil, officials confirmed to Fox 5.
Biberaj defended the decision, telling the local outlet that it was “believed based on the facts that he had no history of having done this,” and asking for “people to be patient” during the investigation.
Keeping a young suspect out of the jail system would, however, tally perfectly with what the progressive ran on.
“I want to make sure we are working with our school system and law enforcement to make sure we are decreasing the number of kids who are referred to our court system,” Biberaj had told the Washington Post in 2019.
During that campaign, she also received “hundreds of thousands of dollars in in-kind contributions” from Democratic megadonor George Soros, the paper said, with the Daily Wire last week putting it at $845,000.
Biberaj is now one of 12 members of the “Virginia Progressive Prosecutors for Justice” who are responsible for more than 40 percent of the state and have repeatedly fought to pass laws easing the numbers in prisons.
They have fought to expunge criminal records, end minimum-sentence rules and end three-strike rules, calling it a “mindlessly punitive law” that has “fueled mass incarceration and furthered recidivism.”
The progressive prosecutors also fought to end cash bail because it “leads to a two-tiered justice system, one for the rich and one for everyone else.”
“We should employ a strong presumption in favor of pre-trial release and not put a price on Virginians’ freedom,” the group wrote to local leaders in March.
Months later, Biberaj’s bail policies came under fire after a man released while awaiting trial for assaulting his wife allegedly returned and beat her to death with a hammer, the Loudoun Times-Mirror previously reported.
Peter Lollobrigido, 49, was facing charges of strangulation and two counts each of abduction and assault on a family member for the first alleged attack in July. His wife also had a protective order against him.
But Lollobrigido was released on a $5,000 unsecured bond and given a GPS monitor when he went back and attacked wife Regina Redman-Lollobrigido at her apartment in Sterling, according to the local report. She died a week later.
He is now being held in custody on new charges of attempted murder, aggravated malicious assault and violation of a protective order, the paper said. Biberaj did not comment on the case when pressed by the Times-Mirror, the paper said.
In Smith’s case, he was ultimately given a suspended sentence of 10 days in jail, contingent on a year of good behavior. His violent arrest was used as an example of why officials believe protesting parents should be treated as “domestic terrorists,” despite the alleged horror attack his daughter suffered.
The distraught dad said he went public last week after learning that the suspect in his daughter’s case was accused of striking again.
The sheriff’s office confirmed to Fox 5 that it was the same boy accused in both sex attacks, but defended the decision not to alert parents after Smith’s daughter reported her alleged attack in May.
That decision was made because “the suspect and victim were familiar with each other, the investigation was complex, and a public announcement had the potential to identify a juvenile victim,” the sheriff’s office said.
Biberaj said her office believed there was no reason for the boy to reoffend, noting that a judge had agreed.
“I would ask this: for people to be patient because as we know, what sometimes is reported initially is not then what the end result of all the facts are,” the prosecutor told Fox 5.
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