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While the government argued that Bernardini should spend a year in prison, Judge Colleen McMahon didnt agree.
Her verdict: no jail time.
If one theme held the proceedings on Thursday together, it was the enduringmystery of the crime.
I dont expect to see anything like this ever again.
In a letter to the court, Bernardini offered his first explanation for his crime.
His defense began simply and sympathetically: I have always loved books.
I could not get enough of it, he wrote.
Bernardini described his scheme as a sort of impulsive whim that got carried away.
He says the first fake email address he created was for someone he knew of in the publishing world.
The government, for its part, argued that Bernardinis motivation was irrelevant.
I think its still a mystery.
He wanted to focus the courts attention instead, on the longevity and sophistication of the crime.
Throughout the hearing, the judge pressed both sides, neither of whom made an entirely convincing case.
Because the crime was so bizarre and ungraspable He went to all this effort to steal book manuscripts?
(I dont equate those two, the judge said.)
After his arrest, Brown said that Bernardini was diagnosed with autism by a forensic psychiatrist.
McMahon expressed sympathy for Bernardinis diagnosis, but rejected the idea that it fully explained or excused his behavior.
Theres no compulsion tothreatenpeople, McMahon said.
He was getting off on fooling people, and keeping it going, she said.
Bernardinis lawyers presented him as a sympathetic figure who had suffered enough.
It is my scarlet letter.
Ball argued that, in a certain way, he appreciated Bernardinis caper.
The difficulties of my manuscripts being stolen were none, Ball wrote.
For once a person cared deeply about something what matter that he was an interloper?
He was glad to know the book world was still capable of a little mystery.
We must be grateful when something human enters the picture, Ball wrote.
When the publishing industry for once becomes something worth writing about.
