A federal appeals court panel this week rejected former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca’s appeal of his conviction on charges of obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.
The 76-year-old former sheriff, who has Alzheimer’s disease, was sentenced in May 2017 to three years in federal prison, but he has remained free pending his appeal.
During arguments before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel in November, Baca attorney Benjamin Coleman contended that the trial judge in the case had abused his discretion by barring jurors from hearing evidence of the former sheriff’s Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis.
Coleman argued the ruling could have affected all of Baca’s criminal convictions and urged the appellate panel to overturn the guilty verdicts.
But the appellate panel found that the trial court “did not abuse its discretion” by finding testimony about the extent of the disease’s impact “unreliable.”
“We find no basis for reversing,” the panel wrote. “… The government introduced sufficient evidence from which a jury could conclude that Baca acted with (the) requisite intent.”
During the November appeals court hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bram Alden said the lower court judge made the correct decision regarding the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, arguing that the Alzheimer’s evidence proffered by the defense expert witness was “unduly speculative” and based upon “unreliable methodology.”
Further, evidence of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis can be “extremely prejudicial” to a jury, Alden said.
Alden said the defense could not prove that Baca was actually suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at the time of the events for which he was convicted. All evidence supporting the Alzheimer’s claim, Alden said, was “anecdotal,” including incidents where the ex-sheriff had forgotten the name of a medication he was taking, that he was described by a co-worker as being “confused,” and that he had forgotten the last name of a colleague. Coleman argued that Baca’s conviction for making false statements during an FBI interview in 2013 was the direct result of mild impairment caused by early stages of the disease. Baca was diagnosed with the disease in May 2014.
“What the jury decided, ultimately, was that this was a man who believed he was above the law but wasn’t,” Alden said.
Baca was convicted on charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice and making false statements. During Baca’s two trials, prosecutors described the ex-lawman as being the top figure in a multi-part conspiracy, which also involved his former right-hand man, Paul Tanaka, and eight deputies who took orders from the sheriff.
The charges stemmed from events more than seven years ago when a cell phone was discovered in the hands of an inmate/informant at the Men’s Central Jail. Sheriff’s deputies quickly tied the phone to the FBI, which had been conducting a secret probe of brutality against inmates. At that point, sheriff’s officials closed ranks and began an attempt to halt the formerly covert investigation by concealing the inmate-turned-informant from federal prosecutors, who had issued a summons for his grand jury appearance, prosecutors said.
