Mike Castiglione
Here’s the thing about plea bargains: generally speaking, the idea is that a defendant must accept the plea deal in order to get the lesser sentence.
Kathryn Knott, who took part in the September 2014 attack of a gay couple in Center City, decided to take her chances and go to trial on the charges rather than accept the same plea deal that saw co-defendants Kevin Harrigan and Philip Williams get probation and 200 hours of community service at an LGBT Center.
That decision wound up costing Knott jail time.
On Feb. 8 Knott, 25, of Bucks County and the daughter of a suburban police chief, was sentenced to five-to-10 months in prison for her role in the assault. On Monday, Judge Roxanne Covington denied defense attorney William J. Brennan’s request to reconsider the sentence on the basis that Knott deserved the same probationary sentence that her two male co-defendants received.
“The sentence is well within the guidelines and is as appropriate as I can provide within the law and shall remain,” Covington said in court. “The motion is denied.
“As injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, hatred toward any group is no different than hatred toward all of us. Every single one of us has a right to be who we are, to love who we want and to walk down the street and enjoy the city safely, without fear of ridicule, of torture, of attack.”
Knott has been in jail for the past month for her role in the beating that left Andrew Haught unconscious and with a broken jaw that needed to be wired shut. She has 30 days to file an appeal.