Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca will risk spending his golden years behind bars after withdrawing his guilty plea in a far-reaching corruption trial on Monday.
The decision will prolong an accountability process that began in late 2013 when federal investigators uncovered evidence of rampant corruption and physical abuse inside Baca’s jails. His deputies ran the facilities like a “savage gang,” according to a parallel report from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Baca cut a deal with prosecutors early this year that would have sent him to prison for six months to atone for covering up extensive abuse of force and civil rights violations by his deputies. He was not accused of participating directly in the beatings and smuggling operation uncovered by the FBI, but allegedly gave his blessing to his deputies’ plan to personally intimidate an investigator and then lied about doing so.
But in July, a judge rejected the plea bargain as too soft on Baca, who ran the nation’s largest sheriff’s department for 16 years. The decision left Baca to choose between letting the same judge decide his sentence on a charge with a maximum sentence of five years, or walking away from the table and going before a jury.
By rescinding his earlier plea on charges he lied to investigators, the former sheriff gives prosecutors a chance to bring new, broader charges with much higher potential prison time.
The Los Angeles County jail system was hellish under Baca’s rule.
Prosecutors will likely now charge him with obstruction of justice and conspiracy in addition to the prior charge, Baca’s attorney told the Los Angeles Times. Baca’s former top deputy Paul Tanaka was convicted on similar charges and sentenced to five years earlier this year. Seven other members of Baca’s LASD team have also been sent to prison in the case.
The Los Angeles County jail system was hellish under Baca’s rule. The FBI only started to unravel the full nature of the scandal after an undercover investigator paid a deputy to smuggle a cell phone into a jail. But with that foothold in place, the feds soon uncovered a string of vicious beatings of inmates.
A total of 18 deputies were ultimately indicted for beating shackled inmates, attacking civilian visitors to the jails, and shuffling inmates around to keep investigators from being able to talk to them. The cases have produced mixed results, ranging from a hung jury in one beating case to a seven-year prison term in another.
Baca was defiant from the outset, alleging that the FBI’s sting was itself illegal and insisting that the department could “police ourselves.” But the official criminal investigation was only the latest in a string of reports detailing an abusive, violent culture among deputies both inside the jails and out on the streets.
Baca’s legal team is reportedly pinning his freedom on the argument that the 74-year-old’s recent Alzheimers diagnosis should take him beyond the court’s reach. His lawyers argue Baca was already suffering from the early stages of the cognitive disease in 2013 when he spoke with federal investigators and, according to prosecutors, lied to them to protect his deputies.
If that claim doesn’t persuade jurors, Baca’s best hope for avoiding prison may for his disease to take an aggressive course. “Though Baca is lucid now, if his condition deteriorates rapidly and he becomes unable to understand the legal proceedings, he could be declared mentally incompetent to stand trial,” the Times wrote Monday.