NASHUA – Ernesto Rivera, the 54-year-old former Hudson man convicted on a slew of offenses in 2014 and sentenced to 33 years in State Prison, was re-sentenced Thursday on the same charges – minus two counts of armed career criminal, which were vacated last summer in light of a state Supreme Court decision.

Superior Court Judge Charles Temple vacated the two convictions, which each carried a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison, at the start of Rivera’s re-sentencing hearing, citing the high court’s August ruling in the case known as State v. Folds.

The remaining charges, spread across five separate cases opened in 2013 and 2014, include possession of cocaine, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, felon in possession of a firearm, witness tampering and criminal mischief.

The case that Temple designed the “lead case” involved the felony possession with intent to distribute charges, on which Rivera was sentenced to a term of seven and a half to 20 years in prison.

He was sentenced to a term of three and a half to seven years on each of the possession of cocaine and felon in possession charges, and another term of three and a half to seven years on each of the four witness tampering charges, to run concurrently with each other.

All told, the sentences add up to a minimum of 18 years, and a maximum of 41 years, in prison.

Because he has been in jail or prison since his arrests several years ago, Rivera has accumulated a total of 2,363 days behind bars, for which he was given credit as part of the re-sentencing order.

That knocks roughly six and a half years off the minimum sentence, leaving him with roughly 11 and a half years remaining to be served.

Temple, the judge, told the parties he reviewed all the documents submitted in the matter in preparation for Thursday’s hearing. The lawyers had presented their arguments during the first part of the hearing a week ago.

What Temple didn’t do, he said, was review any of the original sentencing decisions by now-retired Judge David Garfunkel, who in December 2015 sentenced Rivera to a cumulative 33-year prison term.

In reviewing Rivera’s criminal history, Temple said Thursday that “your criminal behavior has never left you,” despite a period of time when Rivera, then employed in the information technology field, moved to Hudson and bought a house.

The cocaine possession charge was the result of “a very public arrest,” Temple said, referring to the night one of Rivera’s two female victims flagged down a Nashua police officer while Rivera was assaulting her on Main Street.

The witness tampering charges, Temple said, represent “the ultimate affront to justice … a complete disregard for the law both at the street level, and in this courtroom.”

Temple said Rivera, who was once employed as a corrections officer, impressed him as “an intelligent man … I have no doubt you could function in society,” he said.

At the first hearing last week, Rivera addressed the court briefly. “The whole situation has been a conspiracy from the start,” he said, adding that “the state was adamant that I get 33 years … I never got a chance to negotiate with the state.”

But assistant County Attorney Cassie Devine, who has prosecuted Rivera’s cases since early on, rejected Rivera’s claims that the state ignored his requests for negotiations.

“He kept firing his lawyers,” Devine said. “He had four different attorneys, and now he’s going to say the state wouldn’t negotiate?”

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256, or at dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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