Former L.A. County Sheriff Gets 3 Years for Obstruction of Justice
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca was sentenced to three years in federal prison Friday, two months after a jury found him guilty of obstruction of justice and other charges stemming from an FBI probe into inmate abuse inside the Men’s Central Jail.
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca was sentenced to three years in federal prison Friday, two months after a jury found him guilty of obstruction of justice and other charges stemming from an FBI probe into inmate abuse inside the Men’s Central Jail.
Baca sat still and without reaction as U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson handed down the sentence inside a federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles. His wife sat nearby.
He will serve out his time at a prison either at a federal facility at Terminal Island in San Pedro or in Sheridan, Oregon, officials told the Los Angeles Daily News.
The former sheriff’s sentence came after a nearly year long series of events that began last July, when Anderson rejected a plea deal between Baca and prosecutors of a six-month sentence for lying to federal investigators about the probe of inmate abuse in Men’s Central Jail. Anderson told Baca a six-month sentence trivialized his role in the events that led to deputies covering up abuses, looking the other way and altering records.
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