"Sir, I am not sending you to prison."
Those are the words of judge Joseph Farah, who dealt out his sentencing to Stuart Dunnings on Tuesday.
"It is the judgement of sentence that you be put on three years probation with the first 365 days in the Ingham county jail," said judge Farah.
Dunnings pleaded guilty to the charge of misconduct in office in August, and spoke for the first time in court on Tuesday.
"I'm bereft," a tearful Dunnings said. "Save for one thing. And that is the balance and spirtuality I've learned through my rehabilitation and recovery and I respectfully and humbly ask the court for an opportunity to continue that."
The punishment that was given will have Dunnings jailed until November 2017, but that's not quite what Attorney General Bill Schuette had in mind:
"I thought it'd have been more appropriate to be in prison for, you know, at least two years... He deserves time behind bars. I would have liked it to be longer than one year, but it is what it is," says Schuette.
He believes that because of the position Dunnings held in the community.
"It's because when you hold the public trust... you're a prosecutor, you're supposed to enforce the law, not break the law, and that's what he did, and that's outrageous," Schuette exclaims.
In his statements in court, Dunnings apologized to his colleagues at the prosecutors office, the people who put their trust in him, and the communities that looked up to him.
"I let them all down," he says.
Dunnings is ordered to turn himself in to jail on Friday.
