Assistant U.S. attorneys W. Douglas Sprague and Hallie Mitchell argue in court papers that the harsh sentence is warranted because of the financial and emotional toll the fraud had on the victims, the extent Samuel “Mouli” Cohen went to cover up his scam and his refusal to accept responsibility.

“This unrepentant con man with a militant lack of responsibility has blamed everyone_the victims, the Court, his attorneys, the government, the Probation Officer, and the Court reporter_for his actions and their consequences except the person responsible for it,” prosecutors write in a court filing.

Most notably, Cohen’s fraud caused the collapse of the Vanguard Public Foundation, a nonprofit launched in 1972 that awarded grants to a vast array of social causes. Many of Cohen’s victims, including Glover and Belafonte, were associated with the foundation, which supported anti-war causes, environmental groups and other politically liberal issues. Prosecutors said Cohen even preyed on his father-in-law, looting his retirement account.

A federal jury in November convicted Cohen of 15 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering and three counts of tax evasion after a three week trial in San Francisco federal court. His lawyer said Cohen will appeal the conviction.

Cohen, 53, is a son of Russian immigrants who was raised in Jerusalem. He moved to the United States in 1987and became a United States citizen, though prosecutors allege he falsely told victims that the first President Bush personally granted him citizenship.

Cohen was convicted of falsely telling investors beginning in 2002 that a company he launched called Ecast that made electronic jukeboxes for bars was about to be acquired by Microsoft Corp. Prosecutors said Cohen kept the scheme going by soliciting more money from victims with complaints that U.S. and then European regulators were holding up the deal, which required additional investments to pay nonexistent fees and bonds needed to push the deal to approval.

Prosecutors say none of that was true. Instead, they said Cohen used the millions to fund an “absurd lifestyle” that included helping his wife publish a cookbook called “The Kosher Billionaire’s Secret Recipe.”

Prosecutors allege that he jetted around the country in a rented private jet that he to claim to have owned, giving rides to the likes of singer Elton John and actress Jennifer Lopez, neither of which are included on the victims list.

Prosecutors say that Cohen rented a mansion in the wealthy enclave of Belvedere just north of San Francisco and decorated the house with copies of famous paintings from Picasso, Miro and Matisse and other noted artists. But prosecutors said he solicited investments during parties at his house, which he told victims he owned while showing them the artwork he deemed were originals. Prosecutors said that was all part of a ruse to portray himself as a wealthy and savvy businessman.

Cohen’s attorney is asking for a sentence of less than nine years.

“A 30 year sentence is excessive for a 53-year old first-time offender, who has a long history of selfless acts and entrepreneurial innovation,” Cohen’s attorney Marcus S. Topel wrote in a court filing, pointing out that his client has donated at least $2 million to charity.

A federal judge in March barred the use of sodium thiopental purchased outside the country. There is no domestic maker of the product, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been ordered to turn over its foreign-bought drug to the Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA is considering whether to appeal the judge’s order.

Lawyers for the state Department of Justice said Thursday they would reconsider the appeal if it becomes certain that sodium thiopental can no longer be used in California executions.

Marin County Judge Faye D’Opal in December invalidated the regulations because she said the state failed to explain why it chose the three-drug mixture over the one-drug method, which may have a lower risk of causing undo suffering to the inmate. The judge noted that the state’s own expert said the one-drug method was superior.

The appeal says the state still supports the three-drug protocol, but that the governor had directed officials to explore the one-drug option.

“My administration is working to ensure that California’s laws on capital punishment are upheld and carried out in conformity with our statutes,” Brown said in a prepared statement Thursday.

A federal judge halted executions in 2006 and ordered prison officials to improve their lethal injection procedures or he was going to find California’s lethal injection process caused unconstitutional suffering. Since then, the state has constructed a new death chamber at San Quentin Prison, developed new regulations and trained a new team to carry out executions.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg has scheduled a hearing on the federal case Sept. 15, making it clear that no executions will take place in California this year.

But all of the legal maneuvering could be made moot in the fall. A measure to abolish capital punishment in California qualified for the November ballot Monday.

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AP Writer Don Thompson in Sacramento contributed to this report.

Those savings, supporters argue, can be used to help unsolved crimes. If the measure passes, $100 million in purported savings from abolishing the death penalty would be used over three years to investigate unsolved murders and rapes.

The measure is dubbed the “Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement for California Act,” also known as the SAFE California Act. It’s the fifth measure to qualify for the November ballot, the California secretary of state announced Monday. Supporters collected more than the 504,760 valid signatures needed to place the measure on the ballot.

“Our system is broken, expensive and it always will carry the grave risk of a mistake,” said Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin who is now an anti-death penalty advocate and an official supporter of the measure.

The measure will also require most inmates sentenced to life without parole to find jobs within prisons. Most death row inmates do not hold prison jobs for security reasons.

Though California is one of 35 states that authorize the death penalty, the state hasn’t put anyone to death since 2006. A federal judge that year halted executions until prison officials built a new death chamber at San Quentin Prison, developed new lethal injection protocols and made other improvements to delivering the lethal three-drug combination.

A separate state lawsuit is challenging the way the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation developed the new protocols. A judge in Marin County earlier this year ordered the CDCR to redraft its lethal injection protocols, further delaying executions.

Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the state has executed 13 inmates. A 2009 study conducted by a senior federal judge and law school professor concluded that the state was spending about $184 million a year to maintain Death Row and the death penalty system.

Supporters of the proposition, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are portraying it as a cost-savings measure in a time of political austerity. They count several prominent conservatives and prosecutors — including the author of the 1978 measure adopting the death penalty — as supporters and argue that too few executions have been carried out at too great a cost.

“My conclusion is that he law is totally ineffective,” said Gil Garcetti, a former Los Angeles county district attorney. “Most inmates are going to die of natural causes, not executions.”

Garcetti, who served as district attorney from 1992 to 2000, said he changed his mind after publication of the 2009 study, which was published by Judge Arthur Alarcon of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and law professor Paula Mitchell.

Opponents of the measure, such as former Sacramento U.S Attorney McGregor Scott, argue that lawyers filing “frivolous appeals” are the problem, not the death penalty law.

“On behalf of crime victims and their loved ones who have suffered at the hands of California’s most violent criminals, we are disappointed that the ACLU and their allies would seek to score political points in their continued efforts to override the will of the people and repeal the death penalty,” said Scott, who is chairman of the Californians for Justice and Public Safety, a coalition of law enforcement officials, crime victims and others formed to oppose the measure.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, meanwhile, remains one the biggest backers of the death penalty in the state and opposes the latest attempt to abolish it in California. The foundation and its supports argue that federal judges are gumming up the process with endless delays and reversals of state Supreme Court rulings upholding individual death sentences.

The foundation on Thursday filed a lawsuit seeking the immediate resumption of executions in California. The foundation’s lawsuit, filed directly with the state Court of Appeal, argues that since the three-drug method has been the subject of so much litigation — and the source of the execution delays — a one-drug method of lethal injection like Ohio uses can be substituted immediately.

Through it all, a growing media throng has watched as Mirkarimi cried while discussing his family, sweat profusely when defiantly refusing to resign, and even tried to duck questions by making his way through seldom used City Hall stairwells.

“Sorry to make you run,” he told reporters as he speed-walked up two flights of stairs on Monday after meeting with Mayor Ed Lee, who gave him 24 hours to resign or face the misconduct charges.

Mirkarimi vowed to fight for his job, so Lee formally suspended him until the misconduct charges are resolved.

“It’s been confusing,” Mirkarimi told a crush of cameras and reporters Tuesday. “It’s been intimidating.”

Mirkarimi’s fight promises to turn even more surreal and ugly in the weeks ahead.

The mayor on Wednesday swore in interim Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, a retired chief deputy of the department, and filed the formal misconduct case with the city’s Ethics Commission and Board of Supervisors.

“This has been a difficult time for San Francisco,” Hennessy said after the swearing in. “This is not a celebration of me becoming sheriff.”

The commission will investigate and then submit it recommendations to the Board of Supervisors in a very public fashion. Nine of the 11 supervisors would have to agree for Mirkarimi to be permanently removed from office after a public hearing.

The last time the process played out completely, a member of the Airport Commission was removed in the 1970s only to have a court reverse the decision two years later.

“It will be a circus,” said Golden Gate University law school professor Peter Keane, a politically connected observer of many San Francisco City Hall soap operas.

San Francisco politics will also play a leading role in the Mirkarimi case. Before becoming sheriff on Jan. 8, he served two terms on the Board of Supervisors, where he was a reliable vote for the progressive wing of that body. Nonetheless, it appears his support from that quarter is wavering.

On Tuesday night, Aaron Peskin, head of the city’s influential Democratic committee and a former progressive member of the Board of Supervisors, called on Mirkarimi to step down.

“For the residents of San Francisco, his ability to administer, manage and oversee the Sheriff’s Department has been compromised and his adherence to duty and the law has been undeniably marred,” Peskin said. “His resignation best serves the people of San Francisco and all others concerned.”

Mirkarimi’s trouble began New Year’s Eve when he and his wife Eliana Lopez allegedly argued over her desire to take their 3-year-old son to visit relatives in her native Venezuela.

Lopez was a star of a popular soap opera in that country and the case has captured attention throughout Latin America.

Mirkarimi was originally charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, child endangerment and dissuading a witness after the next-door neighbor turned over a video to police showing a tearful Lopez displaying a bruised arm.

Those charges were dropped in exchange for Mirkarimi pleading guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment.

Neither Mirkarimi nor his wife have discussed in detail what happened on New Year’s Eve to cause the bruise.

Lopez canceled an appearance at a press conference Tuesday after her next-door neighbor published an account in the San Francisco Chronicle that accused the sheriff and Lopez of pressuring him to destroy evidence and lie to police.

Lopez’ attorney Paula Canny denied that accusation but declined further comment over concern about possible lawsuits.

Mayor Lee was not reluctant to provide details.

“During an argument with Ms. Lopez on that date, Sheriff Mirkarimi grabbed Ms. Lopez with such force that he bruised her upper right arm,” Lee stated in the formal charges filed Wednesday. There were no other details about the incident.

Lee didn’t take questions on Wednesday.

However, a day earlier he said, “Sheriff Mirkarimi’s actions and confession of guilt clearly fall below these standards of decency and good faith, rightly required of all public officials.”

Mirkarimi believes his actions failed to constitute official misconduct and he said he took full responsibility for the incident when he pleaded guilty.

He was sentenced Monday to three years of probation and a year of domestic violence counseling.

He said he was also undergoing counseling to address his arrogance and anger management issues.