NJ man gets 3 years in videotaped beating

"About to go beat up this bum," the man in the video says.

And that's exactly what he does, punching and kicking a homeless man in the face, bloodying his nose, before wishing him a Merry Christmas.

That videotaped assault led to a three-year prison sentence Friday for the man shown carrying it out.

Taylor Giresi, 22, whose lawyer said he has an IQ of 74 and numerous psychological issues, told Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mellaci Jr. that he didn't intend to hurt David Ivins. But he also said he failed to see what the big deal was.

"I already apologized to the homeless man; I knew him," Giresi said in a halting monotone. "It wasn't like anything serious. But when I put it on YouTube it got serious. I wasn't trying to hurt the man."

Giresi pleaded guilty in January under the terms of a plea agreement to conspiring to use a juvenile to commit a crime. More serious charges, including assault, were dropped as part of the agreement.

Prosecutors and Giresi's defense lawyer agreed Giresi was egged on and had his actions directed by a juvenile who filmed the attack and who was 17 at the time. The juvenile, whose name has not been made public, spent more than two months in a state youth detention center, and later received a one-year suspended sentence and placed on probation for a year.

Giresi was 20 at the time of the attack, but had mental issues and were easily influenced by the co-defendant, with whom he lived in Lake Como, not far from the site of the attack in Wall Township, according to court testimony.

"What I did was wrong," said Giresi, who claimed he was under the influence "of marijuana and something else" that day. "I wasn't thinking right. He said the wrong thing at the wrong time; I reacted on it."

Ivins did not attend the court hearing and his whereabouts could not be determined.