A federal grand jury Friday handed down two new charges against former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, including charges he conspired to obstruct justice and obstructed justice in connection with his department’s efforts to block a federal investigation into the jails.
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His decision was forced by a federal judge who rejected plea deal as too lenient because it only called for up to six months behind bars.
Both prosecutors and defense lawyers cited the 74-year-old former lawman’s recent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in their reasoning for seeking a relatively light sentence under the original deal.
Twenty members of the Sheriff’s Department have been convicted in the probe that began after deputies discovered an inmate was an Federal Bureau of Investigation informant gathering evidence about civil rights abuses and corruption in the jails. He indicated that the maximum sentence for Baca’s crime of lying to federal investigators, five years, was back on the table.
During the course of the investigation that was being conducted by the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and a federal grand jury, a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the Men’s Central Jail accepted a bribe to smuggle a cellphone into the facility. At one point, deputies hid the FBI’s jail informant so he could not feed information to the agency. After sheriff’s officials discovered that an inmate, Anthony Brown, was an FBI informant, they booked him under false names and moved him to different locations in order to keep him hidden from federal investigators. Jurors will not be told that he previously pleaded guilty.
The same year Baca allegedly committed the offense, he was named Sheriff of the Year by the National Sheriffs’ Association. Anderson had sentenced Tanaka to five years in prison.
“Baca knew what was going on, and he perpetuated and encouraged the culture”, the union leader said today.
Specifically, Baca admitted he was aware that his deputies planned to intimidate the agent and directed them to “do everything but put handcuffs” on her, his plea agreement stated. “When confronted with the mess he had created, Baca blamed his subordinates instead of taking responsibility as a leader should”.
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Michael Zweiback, one of Baca’s attorneys, said Monday he expected prosecutors to level the more serious charges, which mirror those brought against Baca’s former second-in-command, Paul Tanaka, who was convicted earlier this year of obstruction of justice in the same FBI investigation.
