Abraham Pearson paid two teenage girls to have sex with him in the basement of his Syracuse-area home. He paid one girl with Marlboro cigarettes, and the other with cash. Then, he distributed the resulting tapes and images.

Pearson's life as he knew it effectively ended with the 2003 arrest. His wife, a physician, divorced him. She got the three kids. Now 52 years old, he's serving out a 15-year sentence in federal prison.

But on Thursday, Pearson won at least a temporary victory in an intriguing fight over restitution. In a decision worth perusing, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals -- no, Judge Sonia Sotomayor was not part of the panel -- directed a trial judge to explain more fully the rationale behind ordering Pearson to pay the two girls $974,902.

The money covers mental health care and other medical assistance. As a consultant noted:

"Each victim 'has a number  of mental health issues that will require treatment and services presently and into the future, some for the rest of her life' as a result of her sexual assault by Pearson."

But the $974,902 ordered by the trial judge was much less than the $2 million that a consultant suggested would be required. In part, the judge determined the teenage girls "had some problems before" that Pearson might be responsible for.

The 2nd Circuit had not previously ruled on whether restitution in criminal cases like this could include coverage of future medical care. On Thursday, for the first, the circuit joined others in ruling that it could, but still sought more explanation. As the appellate panel noted:

"In this case, although the record contains evidence of the victims’ need for long term  counseling and of the cost of that counseling, the district court did not explain how it estimated  the victims’ future expenses."