Brooklyn, NY – A thug's arrest last month on charges of attacking Jewish subway riders earned him an extra year in jail for an earlier hate crime conviction.
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Joseph Jirovec, 19, had pleaded guilty to the earlier racially motivated robbery of black teens in return for a six-month sentence, but his latest exploits on a Brooklyn Q train breached the deal and the judge agreed with the prosecuter, Richard Farrell, for a stiffer sentence.
Jirovec, who posed with a handgun on MySpace Web pages, wasn't playing the tough guy act in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
"I want to be a good person. I'm begging for your mercy, please, 'cause I don't want to be like this. And the people I'm around in jail is not helping that. I don't want to do this anymore," he told Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun.
But the judge brushed aside the apology for breaking the deal and slapped Jirovec with 1-1/2 years to 4-1/2 years in prison.
A grand jury is still considering hate crime charges in the Dec. 7 attack. [NY Daily News]