Former L.A. County sheriff to plead guilty to corruption charge
By Alicia Avila and Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has agreed to plead guilty to lying to federal investigators conducting a corruption and civil rights probe of the nation's largest county jail system, the U.S. Attorney's Office said on Wednesday.
Baca, 73, who served as the top elected law enforcement official in Los Angeles for 15 years before retiring in January 2014, would spend up to six months in jail under terms of his plea agreement, if accepted by a judge, U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker said.
The deal would make Baca the 18th current or former member of the sheriff's department convicted of criminal charges that stem from a long-running federal investigation of corruption and suspected abuse of inmates at two downtown Los Angeles lockups.
"Today's charge and plea agreement demonstrate that illegal behavior within the sheriff's department went to the very top of this organization," Decker told a news conference announcing the plea agreement.
Baca joined the Sheriff's Department as a deputy in 1965 and was first elected in 1998 to lead the 10,000-member law enforcement agency that controls the Los Angeles County jail system, which houses an inmate population of about 18,000.
Unlike state and federal prisons, county jails primarily house inmates awaiting trial or those sentenced to a year or less behind bars.
Decker said Baca agreed to plead guilty to a single federal charge of making false statements to investigators in 2013 when he asserted he had no prior knowledge of efforts by his deputies to intimidate an FBI agent and thwart a criminal probe of his department.
Specifically, Baca has admitted that he actually was aware that his deputies were going to contact the agent and that he had directed them to "do everything but put handcuffs" on her, according to his plea agreement, Decker said.
Baca was scheduled to appear for a plea hearing in federal court in Los Angeles later in the day. His lawyer could not be reached by Reuters for comment.
Under the plea deal, Baca is free to withdraw his guilty plea if a federal judge overseeing the case decides to impose a harsher penalty, in which case prosecutors would seek a federal indictment, Decker said.
A blue-ribbon commission in 2012 blamed Baca for failing to halt what it determined was a persistent pattern of excessive force against inmates by his deputies.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman and Alicia Avila; additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Andrew Hay and Cynthia Osterman)