Koran Dunker Pleads Guilty to Disorderly Conduct
Charles Johnson
Mon Mar 3, 2008 at 9:46 pm PST • Views: 497
Stanley Shmulevich, who put a Koran in a toilet at New York’s Pace University, has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct: Pace Student Who Dumped Korans in Toilet Gets Community Service.
NEW YORK (AP) — A former Pace University student who twice threw copies of the Koran into a toilet at the school after disputes with Muslims pleaded guilty Monday to disorderly conduct in connection with the incidents.
Stanislav Shmulevich, 24, pleaded guilty as part of a deal in which he must do 300 hours of community service. He has completed about 80 hours of the service at a hospital, his lawyer said.
Shmulevich, of Brooklyn, admitted he tossed the Muslim holy books into toilets at Pace on Oct. 13, 2006, and Nov. 21, 2006. A criminal complaint says the Koran that was recovered in the October incident “was covered in feces.” In both cases, a teacher found the books in a men’s room on the second floor of the school’s main building in lower Manhattan.
Muslims consider the Koran a sacred writing that contains the direct word of God, and desecrating it is seen as an offense against God.
Detective Faisal Khan, who prepared the complaint, said Shmulevich told him “he committed the acts out of anger toward a group of Muslim students with whom he had a recent disagreement.”
Shmulevich, a business major and immigrant from the former Soviet Union, initially was charged with two counts of criminal mischief as a hate crime. The charge is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.
His lawyer, Glenn Morak, said he believed the disorderly conduct plea was an appropriate disposition. “There was no hate crime here,” Morak said. “He accepts responsibility, and he is repentant.”
Frank says: