A Pennsylvania professor of neurology was sentenced on Friday, January 7, 2011 after pleading guilty to charges arising from an incident in 2008. The 41-year-old neurologist had been arrested in March of 2008 and charged with solicitation of a minor.

According to police records, the 41-year-old man had offered to pay $750 to an undercover agent who was a participant in a child sex sting operation. The officer told the middle aged man that he was a young girl's uncle, and for the agreed upon sum would arrange a meeting with the child. The man was told that the imaginary child involved in the situation was a ten year old female.

After the neurologist's arrest by Pennsylvania law enforcement officials, his attorney made the argument in his defense, that a severe head trauma suffered when he was mugged in 2005 was the cause of his behavior. As a former professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in dementia, the defendant understood the effects and symptoms of mental deterioration.

After the arrest, the neurologist relocated from Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania to Waynesboro, a small city located in Virginia where he currently resides.

The defendant eventually pled guilty to the federal charge and was sentenced to serve three years and eight months in a federal prison. The sentence was approximately half the time recommended in the sentencing guidelines. The expectation of the loss of his medical license reportedly helped mitigate the sentence.

Source: The Washington Post "Pa. neurologist sentenced in $750 child sex sting" 1/7/11