Former LA County Sheriff Lee Baca to plead guilty in corruption case

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca will plead guilty today in federal court to one count of making a false statement, according to a statement by the U.S. Attoey’s Office.

It is a major development in a long-standing federal criminal investigation into corruption and abuse in the county’s jail system.

After 15 years as sheriff, Baca retired two years ago amid the FBI’s investigation.

More than a dozen deputies have been convicted of federal corruption charges, including obstructing justice by attempting to impede the FBI investigation into the jails.

The charges reached the department’s upper echelons in May with the indictment of former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, who served as Baca’s second-in-command and ran much of the department’s daily operations, and former Capt. William “Tom” Carey.

Carey pleaded guilty in August to lying on the stand during the obstruction of justice trial last year of another sheriff’s deputy. Tanaka’s trial is scheduled for March 22.

Tanaka’s attoey H. Dean Steward said they had plaed to call Baca as a witness in Tanaka’s trial and “that continues to be our plan.”

“His guilty plea changes nothing for our defense,” Steward said Wednesday in a statement.

“This has been a very interesting case from the begiing,” Steward said. “Former Sheriff Baca’s guilty plea today in federal court in Los Angeles makes it all the more interesting.”

Steward had filed a motion requesting that Baca be granted immunity to testify, which was denied by a judge in September.

The indictment of Tanaka and Carey showed that they largely orchestrated the attempt to thwart the FBI’s investigation into corruption in the jails.

Between August and December 2011 Tanaka and Carey allegedly gave orders and oversaw actions that obstructed an FBI investigation into civil rights violations in the jails where deputies allegedly beat inmates and smuggled contraband to inmates in exchange for bribes.

Tanaka and Carey allegedly ordered inmate Anthony Brown to be moved from Men’s Central Jail once they discovered Brown was an FBI informant. Tanaka allegedly met in a parking lot with deputies who were assigned to pose as Brown’s cellmates who were being abused by deputies to glean what information Brown had given to the FBI. Deputies allegedly told employees in the records center they were under the authority of Tanaka when they asked the employees to create false entries to show Brown had been released from custody and re-booked under various aliases so the FBI couldn’t track him and so that he couldn’t testify before a grand jury, according to the indictment.

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