Feds: Pa. sexter's cat-and-mouse claim is insulting

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A western Pennsylvania man’s argument that he was engaged in a “cat-and-mouse” game when he extorted sexually explicit cellphone images from teenage girls is “an insult to his victims as well as to cats,” a federal prosecutor wrote, asking a judge to consider sentencing the defendant to life in prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Haller’s sentencing memorandum for 41-year-old Russell Freed argues in unusually stark language that Freed deserves far more than the mandatory minimum 15-year prison sentence because his victims were minors.

Freed, a Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission engineer who lost his job last year, is scheduled for sentencing Friday before U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry.

Freed’s attorney, Ronald Hayward, argued in a 55-page memorandum filed last week that sentencing guidelines suggesting his client deserves life in prison shouldn’t apply because the production of child pornography charge to which he pleaded guilty in March didn’t have sexting in mind. The potential life sentence unfairly lumps in Freed with “mass producer(s) of child smut,” Hayward wrote.