2 Ex-Officers Sentenced in False Drunk-Driving Case

Two California Highway Patrol officers fired last year for filing a false drunk-driving case against a Mission Viejo woman were sentenced Wednesday to 120 hours of community service and three years’ probation.

Kimberly Ann O’Hara, 23, who was arrested last April 19, attended the sentencing by Orange County Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno and said the former officers’ punishment was “harsher” than she had expected because of the order to perform community service.

“I guess that since they’ve been fired the sentence is OK,” she added, “but it shows me that they weren’t taking into consideration what happened to me, spending a night in jail and how I could’ve been fired from my job for not showing up at work the next day.”

The district attorney’s office on Oct. 17 filed felony charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice against former officers Robert Scott Fitzgerald, 25, and Gary Sterkel, 26, and the two pleaded guilty to the charges the same day. Briseno reduced the offense to a misdemeanor as part of Wednesday’s sentencing.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Maury Evans said he told Briseno that the offense was a “very serious matter” but did not recommend a specific sentence. He said the punishment was appropriate because the officers had been fired, adding: “They’ve suffered enough.”

Fitzgerald and Sterkel did not speak during the sentencing hearing, and their attorney, Matt Kurilich, could not be reached for comment after the proceeding.

According to court records, Fitzgerald wrote a false police report last year declaring that he had seen O’Hara weaving in traffic. Both officers later falsely testified in court that they had observed her driving.

O’Hara said she pulled over to the side of Interstate 5 twice after leaving a San Clemente bar because she had the flu and was feeling too sick to drive. She said two CHP officers pulled up behind her and agreed to take her home, but that a second pair of officers--Fitzgerald and Sterkel--arrived, gave her a field sobriety test and then took her to jail.

O’Hara said one of the officers who had first been on the scene was subpoenaed and later told the district attorney’s office that he and his partner were the ones who had first approached her.