Longtime Long Island DA and his top aide get five years in prison for covering up fed probe of Suffolk police chief’s attack on shackled prisoner

A former high-powered Long Island prosecutor and his top aide were sentenced to five years each in prison on Tuesday for helping cover up the beating of a shackled prisoner suspected of stealing sex toys and pornography from a Suffolk police chief's car.

Four-term Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota and veteran anti-corruption prosecutor Christopher McPartland were convicted in December 2019 on counts of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and civil rights violations.

'I hope not to die in prison alone,' the 79-year-old Spota told US District Judge Joan Azrack before hearing his sentence, which also includes a $100,000 fine, Newsday reported.

The once-respected law enforcement official also called his conviction 'the lowest point' in his life and said he feared and expected it would be his legacy.

Disgraced Suffolk County DA Thomas Spota, 79 and Christopher McPartland, former chief of an anti-corruption bureau, were sentenced on Tuesday to five years in prison

In sentencing McPartland, 55, Azrack said: 'this was not a momentary moral lapse but years of criminal coverup.' 

In a statement, acting US Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis said the defendants had undermined the public's faith in the criminal justice system.

'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,' Kasulis said.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence the disgraced prosecutors to eight years for doing 'the exact opposite' of their jobs in the face of a scandal that eventually engulfed the county's law enforcement power structure. 

Lawyers for Spota and McPartland had argued that home confinement and community service were more appropriate punishments than time in prison. 

Spota asked the judge to take into account the heavy toll this case has taken on him and his family, including his wife of 51 years, their three grown children and grandchildren. He was disbarred and relegated to working as a liquor store clerk to make ends meet, and was said to be in declining health. 

Lawyers for both defendants argued that they were 'fundamentally good' and decent men.  

Judge Azrack, herself a former prosecutor, rejected the defendants' pleas for leniency. 

'During a years long conspiracy, the sitting district attorney — let me repeat, the sitting district attorney — conspired to tamper with witnesses in order to thwart a federal investigation into an assault committed by the head — the head — of the Suffolk County police department,' she said. 

Prosecutors said Spota and his aide helped cover up the beating of a shackled prison by then-Suffolk Police Chief James Burke in 2012. Burke pleaded guilty in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison 

Azrack spoke of the need to send a 'clear message that no one is above the law.'

Christopher Loeb, the prisoner who was beaten by then-Suffolk Police Chief James Burke while in shackles nearly a decade ago, also spoke in court, arguing that Spota deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison.  

According to prosecutors, Burke assaulted Loeb who was under arrest and being held in an interrogation room in 2012 at precinct in Hauppauge, New York. 

Loeb, a heroin addict, 'had broken into Burke's official police vehicle and stolen his gun belt and ammunition, and a duffel bag containing cigars, sex toys, prescription Viagra and pornography,' the prosecutors said. One of the items was said to be a DVD that showed a masked man torturing a sex worker, according to Loeb. 

After the assault, the chief ordered high-ranking commanders to make sure 'officers who had witnessed the assault would never reveal what they had observed,' prosecutors said. 

Burke beat up Christopher Loeb , a heroin addict who had taken his gun belt, ammunition, a box of cigars and a bag containing sex toys and pornography

He also recruited Spota, a 'long-time mentor' and McPartland, a personal friend who was chief of investigations and of an anti-corruption bureau, to join the scheme, they added. According to court testimony, the participants of the conspiracy called themselves 'The Inner Circle.' 

They concocted a story that Burke was an innocent bystander who never entered the interrogation room where Loeb was being held, pressured witnesses not to cooperate and asked some to give false information, prosecutors said. One detective was charged with perjury for lying under oath. 

For more than a year, federal investigators found themselves unable to get anyone beside Loeb to say what happened. Then, a who was in the room broke ranks, accepted immunity offer and led them not only to the truth about the assault, but the cover up as well. 

At trial, retired Suffolk police lieutenant James Hickey testifying as a key government witness linked Spota and McPartland directly to the conspiracy describing a 2015 meeting in Spota's office that came after federal officials relaunched a probe into the beating. 

Spota demanded the officer find out if anyone in their sphere had 'flipped,' he testified.

'Somebody's talking. You better find out fast, if it´s not too late,' Spota said, according to the testimony.

Burke, 56, pleaded guilty in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. He was released to home confinement in April 2019 after serving most of his sentence.

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.

Spota later hired Burke to work in his office as an investigator, promoted him to chief investigator and vouched for him when he was appointed chief of the police department, one of the largest suburban forces in the country with 2,500 officers.

Even before his public fall from grace, Burke had come under scrutiny for his handling of the Gilgo Beach serial killings. Multiple people who were interviewed for the Discovery+ documentary Unraveled, which aired earlier this year, and its eponymous companion podcast, claimed that the former top cop is 'shrouded in accusations of being tied to the Gilgo Beach murders.'

Between 2010 and 2011, 11 sets of human remains were uncovered by the beach, located in Suffolk County, Long Island, an hour east of New York City. Many of the the victims were sex workers. 

Prior to becoming Suffolk County Police Chief in 2011, Burke had been busted for 'having sex in his patrol car while in uniform with a prostitute who used crack cocaine', according to The New York Times.

According to Unraveled, 'just weeks after entering office, Burke shut the FBI out of the investigation into the Gilgo Beach serial killer.' 

Speaking to the producers of Unraveled last winter, Loeb sensationally claimed that Burke may have beaten him because he found an incriminating item inside the duffel bag.

Burke has never been charged, or named a suspect, in connection with the serial killings, which remain unsolved to this day.