A former Fredonia man has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for a kidnapping that happened back in 2016.
Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt announced that Samuel Saeli will spend 19 years in state prison followed by 20 years of parole-supervision after having been found guilty in July by a Chautauqua County jury of Kidnapping in the Second Degree as a Sexually Motivated Crime for the 2016 kidnapping of a 13 year old autistic child from the Walmart store located in Fredonia.
Schmidt said this was the third jury trial of Saeli for this crime. The first, in 2017, ended in a hung jury. The second, in 2018, resulted in Saeli being convicted and sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment plus 10 years of parole supervision. That conviction was later overturned by the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, which then ordered a retrial.
In a press release, Schmidt said, “After eight years of litigation following this horrific crime, we can now finally close the book on Mr. Saeli knowing that he will remain behind bars where he won’t harm any more children. Although courts are generally required to adhere to their prior sentence following a retrial, I sought to obtain the maximum prison and post-release sentence provided under the law, that of 25 years of imprisonment plus 25 years of post-release supervision, which would have represented a significant and unprecedented upward modification of Mr. Saeli’s previous sentence. Special thanks goes to my colleague Ms. Woodard for constructing the legal framework which Judge Wojtasek ultimately followed to sentence higher.”
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