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Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota and Christopher McPartland, his former anti-corruption aide were each sentenced Tuesday, Aug. 10, by US District Judge Joan M. Azrack, to five years in prison.
Additionally, Spota, age 79, of Mount Sinai, was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.
The sentences stem from the defendants’ December 17, 2019 convictions for trying to cover up a prisoner’s beating at a Hauppauge police station and impeding a federal investigation into the abuse of power by then-Police Chief James Burke.
In December 2012, Burke – the highest-ranking uniformed police official in Suffolk County – 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, said the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Loeb 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 US Attorney's Office said.
After the assault, Burke ordered high-ranking lieutenants of the SCPD to ensure that the detectives and officers who had witnessed the assault would never reveal what they had observed.
He also enlisted the help of his long-time mentor, then-District Attorney Spota, and McPartland, age 55, of Northport, his personal friend, to ensure that the witnesses kept quiet.
A federal grand jury investigation into the Loeb assault as a civil rights deprivation was opened by the US Attorney’s Brooklyn Office, with the assistance of the FBI, in the spring of 2013.
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. Because of their obstructive efforts, the federal investigation was unsuccessful and was closed approximately eight months later.
Approximately one year later, prosecutors from U.S. Attorney’s Long Island Criminal Division reopened the investigation.
As certain key witnesses were then compelled to testify before the grand jury under a grant of immunity, the truth about Burke assaulting Loeb finally emerged.
Burke pleaded guilty to a civil rights violation and conspiracy to obstruct justice in February 2016 and was sentenced to 46 months’ imprisonment.
Spota and McPartland both resigned from the District Attorney’s Office in light of the charges against them and have since been disbarred.
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