By Scott Daugherty
The Annapolis Capital
Under state law, the sexual relationship a former county police lieutenant had last year with a 16-year-old girl was legal. Under federal law, however, he will have to serve five years in prison for asking the girl to send him naked pictures of herself.
Standing in packed Baltimore courtroom, James Cifala, 48, of Edgewater was ordered yesterday to report to federal prison by Jan. 31 to start serving his sentence - which was the mandatory minimum allowed under federal law but still several months longer than recommended under federal sentencing guidelines.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but I am sorry,” Cifala told the family of his victim in U.S. District Court before turning to more than 30 of his friends and family members and offering a similar apology.
“I’m sorry, and I hope you can forgive me,” said Cifala, who at the time of his Jan. 22 arrest was a supervisor in the county’s Western Police District and the co-owner with his wife of a Rita’s Italian Ice in Edgewater.
The victim, who previously worked for Cifala at the Rita’s, did not attend yesterday’s hearing and the her family declined to comment about the sentence and apology.
Cifala, his wife, Judy, and his attorney, Andrew White also declined to comment.
In court, the victim’s mother choked back tears as she recalled how Cifala “exploited and manipulated” her daughter, and how he bought her a cell phone and used a pseudonym to hide their relationship.
She said the girl - once an outgoing, honor roll student - began cutting herself and even threatened to commit suicide after Cifala was arrested.
“She blamed herself for getting him in trouble and us for taking him away from her,” the mother said, adding that when news of his arrest reached her daughter’s high school the girl was forced to drop out and attend a different school for her senior year.
Cifala, who served 27 years with the county Police Department, pleaded guilty Nov. 4 to one count of receiving child porn.
The charge stemmed from a series of text and picture messages Cifala traded last year with the victim.
Prosecutors said the victim’s mother called the FBI about Cifala in September 2009. Agents searched the girl’s cell phone and recovered sexually explicit pictures, including some of herself that she had sent to Cifala. There also was at least one image of a man they believed to be Cifala.
No photos of the victim were found on Cifala’s phone or home computers, according to the plea agreement. While investigating, agents found more than 10 explicit photos of other underage girls on an old, unused computer in Cifala’s home.
Prosecutors said Cifala first met the victim in 2007, when she was only 14. The two spoke about having sex, but Cifala told her they had to wait until she was 16 years old - when it would be legal.
Over the next two years, Cifala used social networking websites and a prepaid wireless phone to stay in contact with the victim. The two traded more than 1,300 text and picture messages in the three weeks between Aug. 14 and Sept. 6, 2009, prosecutors said.
In court, White described his client’s decision to have a sexual relationship with the victim as “disastrously stupid.” But, he said, the relationship was legal accept for the photos and that his client had done a lot of other good things in his life.
“There is another side to him,” White said, recounting how Cifala helped other teenage girls turn their lives around and become respectable members of society. He noted that some of his supporters traveled from as far away as West Virginia and China and to attend yesterday’s hearing.
“Look at the good he has done for so many people... that is the side that defines him, not this stupid three-month decision,” White said.
U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake agreed yesterday the actual trading of photos only occurred over a relatively short period of time. But, she added, there was more to this case than just the few weeks of text messages outlined in the indictment.
“I can’t overlook that there was a relationship and contact before the victim was 16,” she said from the bench. “It was a serious offense and a serious sanction is warranted.”
Blake sentenced Cifala to five years in federal prison. Upon his release, he will be on supervised probation for 15 years and must register as a sex offender.
While many of the naked pictures were taken by the girl herself, prosecutors did not charge her with any crimes.
Cifala joined the county Police Department in 1982 and served most of the past decade as the head of its Crime Prevention Unit, speaking at community meetings and schools. He left the department on Feb. 1, police said.
According to court documents, he resigned.
Copyright 2010 Capital Gazette Communications, Inc.