The thief took a duffel bag from the car that contained sex toys, a pornographic DVD and Viagra. McPartland, who also is serving a five-year sentence, is incarcerated at Beaumont Federal Correctional Complex in Texas, according to the newspaper. I realized that my career was over, he testified, and that if I even try to go to the feds at this point, I would be dead in Suffolk County.. The U.S. attorney's office also argued that the defendants hadn't accepted responsibility for their actions and deserved more time in prison than sentencing guidelines recommended because of "the need for deterrence" and the "egregiousness" of their actions. From breaking news to special features and documentaries, the NewsdayTV team is covering the issues that matter to you. "When a sitting District Attorney and one of his top prosecutors are corrupt and use their power to intimidate witnesses and cover up a brutal assault by a high-ranking law enforcement official, they not only jeopardize the safety of citizens who are entitled to the protection of the law, they also undermine confidence in the integrity and fairness of our criminal justice system," she said. They placed fear of retaliation inside the minds of those who may otherwise have been willing to cooperate, and they interfered with efforts of federal investigators who were trying to get to the bottom of a heinous crime. Prosecutors want a federal judge to deny bail for ex-Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota and his former aide while . During a meeting that year, Mr. McPartland speculated about who the rat was. Spota and McPartland helped to ensure witnesses of Burkes crimes using threats against themselves and their families during a U.S. grand jury investigation into Burkes deprivation of Loebs civil rights. "To see any old man live the rest of his life in a prison cell, possibly dying in jail, that kinda sucks but you have to be accountable for what you did," Loeb added after court. Together, Mr. Spota, Mr. McPartland and Chief Burke controlled what amounted to a law-enforcement fiefdom in the eastern half of Long Island, prosecutors said. He was convicted along with Christopher McPartland, 53, who paradoxically had been Suffolk Countys top anticorruption prosecutor. Spota called Bellone's assertions "baseless" and said the county executive had a "vendetta" against him for investigating and prosecuting people close to him. Burke also enlisted the help of his long-time mentor, then-District Attorney Spota, and McPartland, his personal friend and then-Chief of both Investigations and the Government Corruption Bureau, to ensure that the witnesses kept quiet. All rights reserved, Met Gala 2023: Start Time, Theme, Guests & Everything Else to Know, Construction May Make Getting to JFK Airport a Nightmare for 3 Years: What to Know, 20 Students Injured in Long Island School Bus Crash With Pickup Truck, 25-Year-Old Makes $200/Hour Without a Bachelor's Degree: I Work Less Than 6 Hours a Day'. The defense attorney also argued that McPartland should get less prison time than Burke because Burke was responsible for the underlying crime. Burke also enlisted the help of Spota and McPartland, "to ensure that the witnesses kept quiet. Anyone can read what you share. "We are paying for that corruption today. Thomas Spota and one his top aides in the Suffolk County district attorney's office, Christopher McPartland, were convicted in December 2019 on counts of conspiracy, obstruction of . Spota and McPartland both resigned from the District Attorneys Office in light of the charges against them and have since been disbarred. Prosecutors said Spota and McPartland did "the exact opposite" of their jobs so they could protect Burke in a nefarious plot aimed at maintaining a power structure controlled by those who believed they were above the law. Ex-Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota sentenced to 60 months in prison and $100K fine for obstructing a federal civil rights investigation. Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine today after attempting to obstruct a federal investigation into the brutality of a prisoner by former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke in 2012. Copyright 2023 Newsday. But a few months later, in early 2013, Mr. Loebs lawyer publicly accused the police of assault, triggering a civil rights investigation. He won election after election for 15 years with bipartisan support. But the prosecution painted Spota as someone who compromised his ethics to protect his loyal protg after a nearly four-decade relationship that started when Burke, at 14, was the star witness for Spota in 1979 as he prosecuted another teenagers suffocation murder. Word of a reopened probe panicked Spota, according to Hickeys testimony. Uli Seit for The New. The obstruction initially worked, thwarting federal agents for several months. Spotas conduct, like Mr. McPartlands, was not a momentary moral lapse. Spota: Yes, I met with them. Burke became a Suffolk cop and was promoted to sergeant; a 1995 department probe found that he had a sexual relationship with a prostitute who sold drugs, according to Newsday. Spota, 80, is now an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. August 10, 2021 / 7:09 PM / CBS New York CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota was sentenced Tuesday for a cover-up involving the county's. During closing arguments, Krantz presented jurors with a list of "10 reasons why James Hickey cannot be believed" that included "raw self-interest" and a "psychotic break from reality.". Loeb, the abused prisoner, also spoke in court Tuesday, telling the judge that Spota "should spend the rest of his life behind bars." Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Jacqueline Maguire, Acting Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the sentences. All rights reserved. Spota and Burke had a kinship that dated to the ex-chief's teenage years in the late 1970s, when he was a star witness in a murder case that Spota was prosecuting. 271 Cadman Plaza East New York Daily News. With todays sentences, justice has been served and the defendants have learned the consequences of their crimes, just like anyone else who has broken the law.". He always had a soft spot for a police officer named James Burke, who rose under his tutelage to become the countys chief of police. On Tuesday, after the verdict was read, Mr. Loeb, the man who was assaulted by the police chief, poked his head into the emptying courtroom. She said that Burke had pleaded guilty quickly after his separate arrest and that, as prosecutors, Spota and McPartland were supposed to be an "essential bulwark against police misconduct.". Hickey linked Spota and McPartland directly to the conspiracy with testimony that included his recalling of a June 2015 meeting in Spotas office that happened after federal officials relaunched a probe into Loebs beating after their initial investigation fell flat in 2013. Spota was convicted in December 2019 on federal charges of conspiracy . In December 2012, then-chief of the SCPD, James Burke "physically and verbally assaulted a shackled prisoner, Christopher Loeb, who was under arrest and being held in an interrogation room at the 4th Precinct in Hauppauge," a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office said. The verdict was a hard-fought victory for the federal prosecutors and the F.B.I., whose investigation faced setbacks for years. (Provided) A 46 . U.S. District Court Judge Joan Azrack told Spota and McPartland that they violated the public's trust and described their actions as "unconscionable" and as "shocking criminal conduct." Chief Assistant US Attorney Nicole Boeckmann had argued for prison for Spota, saying he had failed to take responsibility for his actions to this day. In 2003, Spota indicted twelve Suffolk residents who used KaZaA, a file-sharing program to spread child pornography. Some police officers were in the interrogation room when Burke walked in and punched Loeb, prosecutors said. Four days after his release from the hospital in October 2015, he received a grand jury subpoena, he said. Burke, Spota and McPartland used the power and influence of their official positions, and the threat of retaliatory arrest and prosecution, to keep anyone from cooperating with that investigation. ) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. According to federal prosecutors, Spota, McPartland, Burke and other police officers met and spoke by phone to discuss how to conceal Burke's role in the assault on Loeb. Mount Sinai, New York, CHRISTOPHER McPARTLAND Burke pleaded guilty to civil rights violations and conspiracy to obstruct justice in February of 2016 and was sentenced to 46 months in prison. .We need to remain focused on continuing our progress and ensuring that the days of the past never happen again.. Mr. Burke later became a police officer. [5], Spota was born in 1941 and grew up in New Hyde Park, New York, on Long Island. Is Convicted on Long Island. /. Now it's brought down the D.A., too", "Former Long Island Prosecutors Sentenced in Plot to Protect Police Chief", THE 2001 ELECTIONS: NASSAU COUNTY; Suozzi Wins Easily in Rebuke of Nassau's G.O.P. Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota and Government Corruption Bureau Chief Christopher McPartland Each Sentenced to Five Years in Prison Tuesday, August 10, 2021 For Immediate Release U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York The Defendants Were Convicted of Obstructing a Federal Civil Rights Investigation They ruined lives and destroyed careers. Those who abuse their power and subject others to cruel and unnecessary punishment must be removed from serving in any official capacity and must pay the price for their conduct. Spota recommended a new federal task force and said that legislation was needed to "attack the owners and the distributors of these programs, who are reaping enormous profits. Expand. ', Long Island Siblings Saved By Heart Transplants Beat COVID. In particular, Mr. Burke hated one of the police officials, Pat Cuff, who had conducted the internal investigation against him in the 1990s, witnesses said. Thomas Spota, the former Suffolk County. Instead of serving the people of Suffolk County, these defendants brazenly abused their exceptional positions of power and public trust to protect their friends and hurt their enemies. No other witness testified to receiving direct orders from Mr. Spota or Mr. McPartland to obstruct the investigation, defense lawyers argued. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts. Spota added that he felt deep anguish for the shame his conviction brought to his family. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Greg Blass Bellone said his actions were inspired by reports of political corruption in the district attorney's office. CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. He was one of the most powerful men on Long Island, serving as the top prosecutor in a suburban county with 1.5 million people. Kenneth Bombace, who also took part in the beating, testified under an immunity deal that he stashed his family in a hotel in 2015 before testifying separately before a grand jury about the conspiracy. Former Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota and a former top aide, Christopher McPartland, joined the ranks of the nation's incarcerated felons Friday after surrendering at separate federal. [11] Spota was called to testify before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 9, 2003, at a hearing concerning "Pornography, Technology, and Process: Problems and Solutions on Peer-to-Peer Networks." Retired Det. Mr. Spota and Mr. McPartland sat without expression as the verdict was read. He lived in Mount Sinai, New York, with his wife. To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com. Thomas Spota was the prosecutor. At trial, lawyers for Mr. McPartland and Mr. Spota tried to shred Mr. Hickeys credibility, calling him a practiced liar and highlighting that he admitted to four extramarital affairs. Assistant United States Attorneys Nicole Boeckmann, Lara Treinis Gatz, Justina L. Geraci and Michael R. Maffei are in charge of the prosecution. Alek Lewis is a lifelong Riverhead resident and a 2021 graduate of Stony Brook Universitys School of Communication and Journalism. The man in custody, Christopher Loeb, was a heroin user with a long criminal record. After hearing four weeks of trial testimony, a federal jury on Long Island found Mr. Spota guilty of four counts, including obstruction of justice and witness tampering. The convictions of Mr. Spota and Mr. McPartland make it clear that the days of Long Islands good old boy networks combining politics, power and policing to benefit a select few, at the expense of the taxpaying public, are dead and gone, said Richard Donoghue, the United States attorney in the Eastern District of New York. [13], In May 2013 the FBI and the US Attorney's Office opened an investigation into alleged actions by James Burke, Chief of the Suffolk County Police Department: the alleged assault of a suspect in police custody, a subsequent cover-up, and coercion of witnesses. The thief took a duffel bag from the car that contained sex toys, a pornographic DVD and Viagra. Chief investigative reporter Jonathan Dienst on crime, corruption and terrorism. The federal judge said prosecutors have enormous power over life, liberty and reputation, but the defendants substantially abused that power by helping to cover up Loeb's assault, forcing detectives to lie to a grand jury and prosecutors and thwarting a grand jury investigation. The governments case is being handled by the Offices Long Island Criminal Division. Mr. Spotas lawyer, Alan Vinegrad, declined to comment on the verdict. The assault happened hours after the Smithtown man, then a heroin addict, stole a duffel bag from Burkes department vehicle with items inside it that included Burkes gun belt and ammunition, along with Viagra, sex toys and pornography. He told jurors Spota grilled him on who he suspected had "flipped," or started cooperating with federal officials. "These sentences send the right message to the public, that they can have faith in their criminal justice system, that the system is not broken and that corrupt police officers cannot and will not be protected by power-hungry prosecutors," she said. Spota and McPartland tried to cover for Suffolk Police Chief James Burke after the top cop attacked a cuffed prisoner. The two remained close during Burke's rise, which culminated in 2012 when he was elevated to the top position in a department with more than 2,500 . Oct. 25, 2017. This story was reported by Nicole Fuller, Bridget Murphy and Michael O'Keeffe. "For well over a decade, I've personally endured horrendous crimes committed by and under this man," Loeb said referring to Spota. Three other police detectives had been in the room participating in the beating, and it was imperative that they all stuck to the same story. In contrast, the U.S. attorneys office had sought 8-year sentences for both defendants. The chief barged into the police interrogation room where the man, handcuffed to the floor, called him a pervert. Prosecutors produced calendar entries and call records that they said showed Mr. Hickey was telling the truth. The sentencing guidelines are the subject of an oral argument set for June 30, federal officials told Patch. He described it as a coalition of five high-powered, corrupt insiders who were behind the cover-up and would take collective aim to discredit and punish their enemies. This story has been shared 137,412 times. Mr. McPartlands lawyer, Larry H. Krantz, said, There are many more legal steps in the case, and we will continue to fight for this.. Mr. Spota viewed Mr. Burke almost as a son, standing with him whenever he was touched by scandal. A federal grand jury investigation into the Loeb assault as a civil rights deprivation was opened by the U.S. Attorneys Brooklyn Office, with the assistance of the FBI, in the spring of 2013. He repeatedly promoted Mr. Burke in the Police Department, consolidating their power.
Gîte à l'orée de la forêt
?>