A federal judge has again recommended Valerie Cincinelli, the former NYPD officer convicted of obstructing a major jury trial in a plan to hire a hired killer to kill her alienated husband, to serve her time in a Connecticut jail.
Cincinelli wrote a letter to the judge, lamenting her planned transfer to Kentucky, according to court documents.
Cincinelli, who was sentenced to 48 months in prison last year after pleading guilty to a single charge of obstruction of justice, is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ online detective.
“My reason for writing to you is to ask you to ask BOP to reconsider my appointment to Danbury CT,” Cincinelli wrote in a handwritten letter to U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert on January 4th.
“I can be stuck here for months and await a transfer to Kentucky, and I would lose the opportunity to release jobs and programs if I stay here in Brooklyn.”
Cincinelli told the judge she had been assigned to a federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, and said “severe weather” has “taken over that state,” citing the Dec. 10 tornado that killed 58 people and caused catastrophic damage. in several cities in the western part of the state.
“Their government recently declared a state of emergency due to the death toll from the tornadoes and the damaged infrastructure,” Cincinelli wrote.
In response to Cincinelli’s letter, Seybert last Thursday recommended to the Bureau of Prisons that Cincinelli be accommodated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury.
Seybert had already asked BOP to send Cincinelli to Danbury following her verdict.
BOP spokeswoman Kristie Breshears said via email that prison designation information cannot be released until after an inmate arrives at the facility.
Breshears added that the agency “routinely receives legal recommendations and weighs a number of factors regarding designation to a facility.” She said the agency ultimately determines where a prisoner is serving his sentence.
Cincinelli’s Manhattan-based attorney James Kousouros said Monday by telephone that his client’s transfer from MDC to Kentucky Jail has been delayed due to the recent COVID-19 rise and tornado damage. He added that Cincinelli was recently tested positive for coronavirus.
“The conditions at the MDC are certainly, with regard to the covid pandemic, absolutely untenable with regard to female inmates,” Kousouros said. “They are not separated as they are in a college environment and the majority of women have received COVID during the recent rise, including Mrs Cincinelli.”
Prosecutors have said Cincinelli, a 12-year-old NYPD veteran from Oceanside, planned to have her estranged husband, Isaiah Carvalho, killed because she did not want to share her pension with him. The couple was also in the process of a divorce and custody of their son. Prosecutors have also said she planned to have the 13-year-old daughter of her ex-boyfriend killed because she felt he was spending too much money on the girl.
Prosecutors dropped two charges of murder-to-rent against Cincinelli as part of an appeals deal.
Nicole Fuller is Newsday’s senior journalist for criminal justice. She started working at Newsday in 2012 and covered former local authorities.
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