Ex-LA sheriff gets 3-year sentence for corruption
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge repeatedly rebuked former Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca for bringing shame on his department as he sentenced him Friday to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran.
In exceeding the twoyear sentence prosecutors recommended, U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson said Baca’s fall was tragic, but it was his own doing and that his role atop a corrupt department where deputies brutalized inmates had ruined lives and done lasting damage.
“Your actions are an embarrassment to the thousands of men and women who put their lives on the line every day,” Anderson told the longtime lawman. “Blind obedience to a corrupt culture has serious consequences.”
Baca was the final and most prominent defendant in a case that blossomed from a civil rights investigation of beatings by guards in the nation’s largest jail system into a broader corruption scandal that led to the top of the department. In addition to Baca and his top lieutenant, 19 others were convicted of crimes ranging from assaults to obstructing justice.
Anderson said he would have sentenced Baca to five years in prison except for his nearly halfcentury of public service and because he’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The judge, however, took exception to a defense contention that Alzheimer’s is a sentence of its own.
“As awful as Alzheimer’s disease is, it’s not a criminal penalty,” said Anderson, who said the suggestion was an insult to millions of others suffering from the condition who have not committed federal crimes. “Alzheimer’s disease is not a get-out-of-jail card.”
The sentence was a blow to the 74-year-old, who had been seeking probation and home confinement.
Baca, dressed in a light blue suit, delivered a scattered address from hand-written notes outside the courthouse after the sentencing in which he thanked the people of Los Angeles, his lawyers and his wife standing by his side, who he couldn’t immediately locate.
He declined to comment on the sentence, but as he waited to cross a street, he said he was a man of faith who believed life was precious.
“I love life no matter where I am,” Baca said.