Ex-lawyer jailed for violating probation
0 Comments | Buffalo News, May 11, 2010 | by Matt Gryta
Kevin J. Love, a former lawyer with long-standing drinking and cocaine problems, was sentenced Monday to 16 months to four years in state prison on probation violation charges linked to his two most recent drunken driving arrests.
Love, 45, of Hamburg, complained to State Supreme Court Justice Russell P. Buscaglia that Erie County Probation Department officials mishandled his court-ordered inpatient treatment and keep trying to force his parents to pay for what he calls that incomplete treatment.
Buscaglia imposed the prison term on Love’s March 10 guilty plea to violating his probation sentence in the DWI cases.
The judge also said he will urge state prison officials to keep Love in a Western New York prison so he can be near his young son and take advantage of local prison substance-abuse programs.
Love has been in custody since September and completed a month of court-ordered inpatient treatment for substance abuse.
Kenneth F. Case, Love’s court-assigned attorney, said his client has accepted responsibility for his actions.
“He is an alcoholic, and that reality has finally hit home, and he’s more than happy to accept responsibility for what he did,” Case said.
But prosecutor Bethany S. Solek and probation officer David Brown told the judge that Love keeps blaming others for his substance-abuse problems.
Love, who resigned from the legal profession last year to avoid automatic disbarment, had pleaded guilty last fall to drunken driving in connection with his arrests Aug. 2., 2008, on Camp Road in Hamburg and Sept. 11, 2009, when he struck another car on South Park Avenue.
Though Love served the six-month jail term Buscaglia imposed Nov. 5, he violated the five years of probation he also received, refusing to complete Buffalo City DWI Court programs
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