MINEOLA, N.Y. – Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced that an inmate in Shawangunk Correctional Facility pled guilty today to plotting the kidnapping and assault of the former NCDA assistant district attorney who prosecuted him.
Chandran Nathan, 59, pleaded guilty today before Acting Supreme Court Justice Helene Gugerty on a charge of Criminal Solicitation in the 2nd degree (a D felony). The defendant faces up to 3-1/2 to seven years in prison when he is sentenced on April 7.
“From his upstate prison cell, this defendant tried have a former prosecutor brutally beaten in a foolhardy effort to coerce fake evidence to exonerate him of a past crime,” said DA Singas. “We take any threat to our current and former colleagues extremely seriously, and thanks to the outstanding efforts of the Nassau County Police Department, State Dept. of Corrections, and our investigators, this defendant’s scheme was exposed, stopped, and he was aggressively prosecuted.”
DA Singas said that NCDA learned from a tip that Nathan, an inmate at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County, N.Y., plotted to have a third party outside of the prison abduct the former NCDA assistant district attorney who prosecuted him off the street, place him in handcuffs, and assault him.
The defendant requested that the former prosecutor be beaten about the body – but not around his face – and to be water boarded, if necessary. Nathan wanted the former prosecutor to give videotaped statements that a number of confessions he used in his career were coerced and tainted. The defendant wanted the prosecutor to mention several cases he handled to obscure his role in the kidnapping.
The case was investigated by members of the Nassau County Police Department’s DA Squad and NCDA detective investigators with assistance from the New York State Department of Corrections.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Anne Donnelly, Deputy Chief of DA Singas’ Rackets Bureau. The defendant is represented by Stephen G. Murphy, Esq.