Judge sentences Darien priest to just over three years in prison

The above link refers to the priest Michael Jude Fay from Connecticut, who stole money from a parish and spent it lavishly with his gay lover. He tried the same trick to get out of prison that a priest of the Diocese or Brooklyn tried: claiming he is close to death from terminal cancer.

"I beg for your mercy not to send me to prison, Fay told the judge. I am already in prison and I beg you to let me die with the medical dignity my doctors and nurses provide."

Fortunately, this judge was smart enough to ignore this trick. Check out this quote from an article about Fay:

"Fay learned he had prostate cancer, but Patafio and other parishioners said he cited problems from the cancer to avoid duties he disliked. He called it playing his "cancer card" they said."

This is exactly what another priest Barry Ryan tried to pull - See my post here. Ryan claimed in 2004 he was too sick from terminal cancer to go to jail, and then ended up moving to Missouri in 2007, resulting in a warrant for his arrest. He finally began serving his jail time in Oct. 2007:

"Ryan, 58, was formally sentenced in 2004 after pleading guilty to criminal sexual act charges. But because he was in the advanced stages of terminal liver cancer, Suffolk County Court Judge Ralph Gazzillo agreed to put off sending Ryan to jail for seven months."

Three years later, Ryan was still alive and his illness had stabilized, but Ryan had moved to Missouri, according to prosecutors."

Ryan appeared frail and gaunt when he was brought into the Riverhead courtroom in a wheelchair Monday. But while informing Gazzillo of the various medications he required, Ryan spoke far more clearly than the whisper he used three years ago at his sentencing."