© AFP Photo / Stan Honda
View of Federal Courthouse in Manhattan where the trial of New York Police Department officer Gilberto Valle, accused of conspiring to kidnap women that he planned to cook and eat, began February 25, 2013 in New York
A former New York Police Department officer convicted of planning to kidnap and rape women before killing and eating them is set to go free after a federal judge overturned his conviction.
According to Reuters, the so-called "Cannibal Cop" Gilberto Valle was acquitted by US District Judge Paul Gardephe on Monday. Valle has been in prison since he was arrested in 2012, and potentially faced life behind bars on kidnapping conspiracy charges.
In his opinion, Judge Gardephe stated that the evidence used to originally convict Valle did not sufficiently prove that the former officer acted on what his attorneys said were sexual, cannibalistic fantasies involving women he never met, as well as his wife.
"The evidentiary record is such that it is more likely than not the case that all of Valle's Internet communications about kidnapping are fantasy role-play," the judge wrote.
Gardephe did uphold Valle's conviction on a less serious charge, which alleged that he used the NYPD's federal database to collect information on various women he intended to target. That conviction carried a sentence of up to one year in prison, but since Valle has been in jail since 2012, he can be set free as early as Tuesday.
Although prosecutors originally argued that Valle's access of the NYPD database signaled that the former officer was taking steps to carry out his lurid plan - they also claimed he had searched the internet in order to learn about using chloroform to knock someone unconscious - defense attorneys said his involvement with a dark fetish website was simply fantasy. When Valle appealed his conviction, his lawyers claimed the jury could not differentiate between the details of his fantasy and real steps toward making it a reality.
Gardephe also pointed to the fact that no one was ever harmed to justify the idea that evidence in the case was lacking.
"No one was ever kidnapped, no attempted kidnapping ever took place, and no real-world, non-Internet -based steps were ever taken to kidnap anyone," he wrote, according to the
New York Post.
"Dates for 'planned' kidnappings pass without comment, without discussion, without explanation, and with no follow-up. The only plausible explanation for the lack of comment on inquiry about allegedly agreed-upon and scheduled kidnappings is that Valle and the others engaged in these chats understood that no kidnapping would actually take place."
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