BLOOMINGTON - Jeff Pelo's background as a police officer and clean criminal history should have resulted in a prison sentence much lower than the 440 years he received for raping four women, according to a motion filed by his lawyer. | Special section | Pelo Investigation Video: Part One | Part Two

Pelo was a sergeant with the Bloomington Police Department when he was charged in 2006 with sexually assaulting four women between 2002 and 2005 and stalking a fifth woman between 2005 and 2006. A McLean County jury in June convicted Pelo of 35 counts related to the offenses, and he was sentenced to 440 years in prison.

In his recent motion, defense attorney Michael Rosenblat argued that Pelo's character should have played a larger role in Associate Judge Robert Freitag's sentencing decision.

"Although any person would want to ruthlessly punish the perpetrator of these offenses, logic and the law tells us that coolheaded justice is the wiser path," Rosenblat said.

The consecutive sentences for each sexual assault were improperly imposed, he said.

Pelo's "history and character would lead one to believe that he would be the model candidate for concurrent sentences," Rosenblat argued.

For Mark Messman, the county's chief felony prosecutor who tried the high profile rape case along with prosecutor Sandy Thompson, Pelo's reputation as a veteran cop was stripped away during the investigation that started on June 10, 2006.

"The evidence presented in this case clearly shows that he (Pelo) was not the person anyone thought he was. To the extent that some believed him to have a high moral character, they were proven wrong by the evidence which showed he had been engaged in a pattern of deceptive and immoral conduct dating back many years," Messman said in response to the Pelo motion.

In remarks at the sentencing hearing, Freitag told the former police officer he went from acting as a public servant to being a plague on the community. Pelo abused his law enforcement position by using department resources to gather information on young women, including several he raped, Messman said at the sentencing.

The 13 to 20 year terms Pelo received for each sexual assault were excessive, according to Rosenblat. He said prosecutors charged Pelo with multiple counts of assault related to each victim but failed to argue each accusation as a separate crime to the jury.

An Oct. 6 hearing is scheduled on post-trial motions.