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Penn. woman who accused stranger of rape and kidnapping sentenced to nearly 2 years in prison: ‘She targeted an innocent man’

Summary

Anjela Borisova Urumova, 20, received a 23-month prison sentence for falsely accusing Daniel Pierson of attempted rape and kidnapping in Pennsylvania, leading to his wrongful month-long incarceration.

Urumova pled guilty to seven misdemeanors, including filing false reports and fabricating evidence.

Investigators uncovered her lie after finding inconsistencies in surveillance footage. She admitted she targeted Pierson because she had seen him before.

Alongside jail time, she must pay $3,600 in restitution, undergo a mental health evaluation, and serve probation. Prosecutors warned the false claim damaged public trust and harmed real victims.

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69 comments

  • Wouldn’t you want a little more than hope if you were facing this, like the state not being allowed to execute you to begin with?

    • I never said I was for the death penalty, and this discussion isn't about it. It is about a person who maliciously accused another of something, and was given a sentence that I feel does not match the crime. If you would like to discuss the death penalty, I'm open to that, but that isn't what we have been talking about, and not where this conversation started from.

      • I’m responding specifically to the blanket statement that people who make false accusations should get the punishment the accused would have.

        If what you meant was “we should make a special law that only applies to rape accusations” then you might want to clarify that.

        • Ok, if that is the direction you would like to take this discussion, then we can go that route. I have no issues with looking at the extremes.

          So, we'll say that there is the defendant, and they have been accused of murder so foul by the witness that in their jurisdiction the death penalty is sought.

          There are many outcomes to this, but for the sake of the discussion you want to engage in, we'll look at three of them, and for each, we will assume that the witness has maliciously, and falsely accused the defendant of this crime.

          In the first outcome, the defendant is found guilty of the crime and put to death. The witness is not discovered, and goes on living their life.

          The second outcome is that the defendant is found guilty and put to death, but after they have been put to death, the witnessn is discovered to have falsified their testimony.

          The third outcome is that the defendant is not found guilty because during the trial the witness was found to have lied.

          Now, we have three ends to the scenario, each very different. Do you believe that in each scenario, the witness, who has maliciously falsified their testimony each time, should be punished differently depending on the outcome of the scenario? If so, what should their punishment be after each outcome?

          • Yes, the punishment should escalate in accordance with the harm caused by the crime to the victims of that crime. That was never the part I was arguing against.

            Imprisonment for people who are a danger to others and some form of restitution to the falsely accused would be fitting in every case, other than the one where someone was killed by the state. At that point it’s too late to do anything for the victim, and killing them isn’t going to save any money or help anyone.

            It’s also a scenario that wouldn’t be possible to begin with if the government wasn’t able to execute people. It’s like trying to solve swatting by swatting swatters instead of saying hey, maybe it shouldn’t be possible to aim lethal government violence at someone to begin with and just hope it’s a gun that never misfires.

            • Ok, so you are anti-death penalty. So are a lot of people. You seem to be trying to make an argument by preaching the to choir. No one here is saying that the death penalty is a good idea. No one is arguing that with you, at all. I'm really not sure what you are getting at.

              I guess if you want some dark humor about it, you could twist around the old idiom: The best time to abolish the death penalty is before we kill an innocent person, the second best time is after.

69 comments