Montoya Gets 6 1/2 Years in Prison for Selling His Vote

Taking a strong stand against corruption in the state Capitol, a federal judge Thursday sentenced former Sen. Joseph B. Montoya to 6 1/2 years in prison for selling his vote to special-interest groups.

U.S. District Judge Milton L. Schwartz, delivering a stern lecture, told Montoya that his crimes had undermined representative government in California and ordered him to pay $40,000 in fines and restitution.

“The system can live with people who are not terribly competent,” Schwartz said. “It can live with legislators who may be lazy. But it cannot survive legislators who say, ‘My vote is for sale. I am here to vote the way I am paid.’ ”

Montoya, a Democrat from Whittier, remained impassive as Schwartz imposed the prison sentence. But the former lawmaker’s wife, Pilar, broke into tears in the first row of the spectators’ section.

In a brief statement to the judge moments before the sentencing, Montoya said he accepted his conviction on seven counts of racketeering, extortion and money laundering. “I believe in the (legal) system,” Montoya told the judge. “The system has found me guilty. I will live with the consequences and so will my family.”

But he lashed out at the media, charging that it had “tried and convicted me before I came to trial.”

The sentencing of Montoya brings to a close the most important case so far in a five-year federal investigation of corruption in the Legislature. U.S. Atty. David F. Levi, who personally helped prosecute Montoya, said the stiff prison term sends a clear message to other lawmakers not to use their positions for their personal benefit.

“This is an appropriate and powerful sentence,” Levi said. “The message I hope it sends is one of deterrence to all public officials in all walks of government life who would contemplate trading the power of their postion for some kind of financial gain.”

Under federal sentencing rules, Montoya will spend at least 5 1/2 years behind bars, Levi said. Because of a recent change in federal law, he will be eligible for a sentence reduction of no more than 54 days a year for good behavior, beginning only after the first year.

An angry Montoya made a dramatic entrance into the courthouse Thursday morning, reaching out and shoving a camera into the face of a news photographer who received a cut just above an eye.

The altercation with United Press International photographer Dan Groschong began when the Montoyas and several friends attempted to push their way through a throng of news people gathered in the courthouse lobby. During the shoving, Groschong said Pilar Montoya grabbed a flash attachment cable attached to one of two cameras he was carrying. When he tried to take a picture with the second camera, Groschong said, Montoya struck it with an open hand.

“I think they’re just real upset,” Groschong said afterward. “I would be.”

Attorneys for Montoya, who was convicted in February, argued that as a first-time offender who had used his elected office for the good of many constituents, he should serve little or no jail time.

But in calculating the sentence, Schwartz agreed with prosecutors who had urged a stiffer penalty for the former senator on the grounds that he had engaged in obstruction of justice during the trial.

Schwartz ruled that Montoya lied on the witness stand and withheld key documents that had been subpoenaed by federal authorities. As a result, the judge tacked on 15 months more than Montoya might otherwise have received.

The judge, who presided over Montoya’s trial, expressed sympathy for the former senator’s family and said he received 65 letters from supporters urging leniency. “I recognize he has done a lot of very fine things for a lot of people,” Schwartz said.

But evidence at the trial showed that Montoya repeatedly used his position to extort money from special-interest groups, Schwartz said, citing “a number of situations extending over a period of more than seven years in which his vote was for sale.”

Among the victims of Montoya’s attempted extortion were representatives of the National Football League Players’ Assn., former sports agent Michael Trope, a Florida insurance executive, representatives of foreign medical universities and an undercover FBI agent posing as a businessman, the jury found. The most dramatic evidence against the senator was a videotape of Montoya accepting a $3,000 payment from the FBI agent at a breakfast meeting near the Capitol.

“This is the most serious kind of white-collar crime because it attacks every person and because it attacks the ability to have representative government,” Schwartz said.

Defense attorney Michael S. Sands said afterward that the sentence was “totally devastating” for Montoya.

But several members of the jury that convicted Montoya, who were on hand for the sentencing, said they thought the penalty was too light. “To me, that seems like a slap on the wrist,” said Ed Reece as he left the courtroom.

Juror Greg Coumis said he believed the judge should have ordered Montoya to pay a much larger fine because it was the former legislator’s avarice that prompted his illegal activities. “The whole trial was based on money,” Coumis said.

Schwartz gave the former legislator two months to file any legal appeals and get his personal affairs in order before turning himself in to federal authorities on June 29.

The judge said he would recommend that Montoya serve his time at the Lompoc Federal Penitentiary, a minimum-security prison with a reputation as one of the softest in the federal system.

Before pronouncing the sentence, Schwartz rejected a motion by Sands for a new trial. The attorney argued that the verdict was tainted because a potential witness on one of the counts refused to testify at the trial, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Montoya’s attorneys said they hoped the former senator, who resigned his post after his conviction, would remain free pending his appeal. But Levi said that unless a court finds that a reversal of the verdict is likely, Montoya will have to begin serving his sentence while his case is under review.