Former LA County sheriff gets 3 years in prison

Ex-Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca will serve three years in federal prison following his conviction in March for obstruction of justice, conspiracy and lying, a judge ruled Friday.

Anderson said he would have sentenced Baca to five years in prison except for his almost half-century of public service and because he's in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Baca's defense attorney revealed during his sentencing that Baca is in the third stage of Alzheimer's.

"As bad as Alzheimer's disease is, it's not a criminal penalty", Anderson said.

The judge said the sentence sent a strong message to elected officials, law enforcement and the public: "No person no matter how powerful ... is above the law".

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.

The crimes tarnished Baca's reputation as a soft-spoken, rail-thin, Zen-like reformer who promoted education and rehabilitation behind bars and preached tolerance and understanding between people of different cultures and faiths.

The case made it hard to reconcile the image of the soft-spoken, rail-thin, Zen-like reformer with the man who told the local FBI head and top federal prosecutor he was ready to "gun up" for battle with them and furiously stated: "I'm the goddamn sheriff, these are my goddamn jails".

"When Mr. Baca was convicted, the jury clearly understood that the Sheriff's Department suffered a failure in leadership under the Baca/Tanaka regime".

The decision will fall to a federal judge who can imprison Baca for up to 20 years.

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Over five years, federal prosecutors meticulously worked their way up the department's ranks, charging lower-level figures and members of Baca's command staff before bringing charges against the sheriff himself.

Baca also was fined $7,500.

The charges involved a host of illegal acts, including a 2011 incident in which two sheriff's investigators confronted an Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in the driveway leading to her apartment and falsely told her they were in the process of obtaining a warrant for her arrest. Anderson rejected the deal as too lenient, and Baca withdrew his guilty plea and went to trial.

Prosecutors then hit him with the two additional obstruction counts.

After Baca's first trial ended with the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal, he reached a plea agreement. MORE: Audio recordings reveal alleged Baca lies " It was an honor to serve the county of Los Angeles for over 48 years", the ex-sheriff told reporters after the sentencing hearing, "and there are things about that process that I thought were important.

More than 200 friends and supporters wrote letters of support to the court on behalf of Baca, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox, former California Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, former Los Angeles Ram-turned-minister Rosey Grier, former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, Hollywood executives, clergy and former jail inmates.

They hailed his unconventional style of policing, his compassion and a lifetime of good works.

Baca's lawyer, Nathan Hochman, argued that because of his medical condition, Baca should be sentenced to house arrest and ordered to perform community service, the LA Times reported.

In his argument for a non-custodial sentence, Hochman wrote that Baca's condition would be best treated outside of prison. Two Alzheimer's experts who recently examined Baca concluded that his condition has progressed from the disease's early stage to "mild dementia", Hochman wrote.