Chandran Nathan sought to have the prosecutor beaten into falsely exonerating him on video
MINEOLA, N.Y. – Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced that an inmate in Shawangunk Correctional Facility was sentenced to three to six years in prison for plotting the kidnapping and assault of the former NCDA assistant district attorney who prosecuted him for a 1993 homicide.
Chandran Nathan, 59, pleaded guilty before Acting Supreme Court Justice Helene Gugerty on February 24 to Criminal Solicitation in the 2nd degree (a D felony).
The NCDA recommended a sentence of 3-1/2 to seven years in prison.
“Any effort to harm or intimidate our prosecutors—current or former—will be met with serious consequences, and this defendant’s foolhardy plot to have a former prosecutor kidnapped and assaulted in a desperate effort to get himself out of prison only earned him more time behind bars,” said DA Singas. “I’m grateful for the assistance of the NCPD DA Squad, our investigators, and the New York Stated Department of Corrections for their outstanding work on this case.”
DA Singas said that the 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.
Nathan was serving a sentence of 37-1/2 years to life for the 1993 killing of a 20-year old man in Manhasset.
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.