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Deputy convicted of obstructing FBI investigation sentenced to 18 months in prison
In this file photo, L.A. Sheriff's Deputy James Sexton (center) walks outside an L.A. court with his attorney and wife. An earlier case against Sexton stemming from an investigation into corruption and inmate beatings in L.A. jails resulted in a mistrial, but he was later convicted. Sexton was sentenced on Monday, December 15, 2014, to 18 months in prison.
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Deputy convicted of obstructing FBI investigation sentenced to 18 months in prison
The last of seven one-time Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies convicted for their roles in obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails was sentenced in federal court Monday to 18 months in prison, the punishment federal prosecutors had sought.
James Sexton's attorney was asking for a 6-month sentence.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox slipped out of the courtroom after the hearing without talking to prosecutors. Sexton's attorney, Thomas O'Brien declined to speak to reporters on the record. O'Brien was the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles about five years ago.
The case involved an elaborate effort by deputies in the jail to hide an informant from the FBI after they learned the agency was investigating reports of beatings and corruption. Sexton changed computer records to that end, according to court testimony.
Sexton had been tried separately from six other former and suspended deputies who federal agents said were involved in the conspiracy. Those men were sentenced in September to between 21 and 41 months in prison.
“You broke the vow you made to protect the public, to protect the community,” U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson told the other defendants in September during a nearly three-hour sentencing hearing. “You didn’t serve the public by concealing what was happening in the jails.”
A jury in September found Sexton guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. It was his second trial. The first was declared a mistrial in May.
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At trial, his lawyer, Thomas O'Brien, argued that Sexton was following orders from officials higher up within the sheriff's department - so had the other deputies.
“I thought were following lawful orders," former sheriff's deputy Gregory Thompson said as he quickly left the U.S. District courthouse in downtown Los Angeles after his sentencing last September. Anderson gave him 37 months in prison.
But the judge also allowed the deputies to spend the holidays with their families before being locked up. He ordered them to turn themselves in Jan. 2.
In court papers, O'Brien said Sexton deserves a lighter prison sentence because he cooperated with investigators in the prosecution of other deputies in the case.
Federal prosecutors said Sexton's cooperation was on his own terms.
"None of his cooperation resulted in the government receiving anything it could use to prosecute others," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox wrote in a sentencing memo. Sexton "provided only the information he wanted the government to know and only against the people he wanted the government to investigate."
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