Ex-Deputy Gets One-Year Term for Sexual Misconduct : Sentencing: A former sheriff’s officer who engaged in a sex act with a mentally impaired inmate avoids being sent to prison, where, a judge said, he would face almost certain death at the hands of prisoners.

A former Orange County sheriff’s deputy, who pleaded guilty to one count of sexual misconduct for having had sex with a mentally impaired inmate in 1987, was sentenced Friday to serve one year in jail.

Bret McCammon, who turned himself in to authorities 2 1/2 years after the crime in an apparent act of religious repentance, was led away in handcuffs after Superior Court Judge David O. Carter handed down his sentence.

Despite the seriousness of the crime and the vulnerability of the victim, Carter said he decided not to send McCammon to state prison because of the defendant’s decision to confess to the crime and because he feared for the former deputy’s safety.

“Quite frankly, if the other prisoners get a hold of you, you are dead,” Carter told McCammon during the sentencing hearing.

McCammon pleaded guilty in April to engaging in oral copulation with an inmate who was suffering from a degenerative disease that left him mentally impaired. The incident occurred Jan. 6, 1987, while McCammon was employed at the Central Men’s Jail, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregg Prickett.

Another felony charge of committing an illegal act under the color of authority was dismissed.

Carter described McCammon, 34, as a “weak” individual with an “insatiable sexual appetite.” As part of the conditions of his five-year probation, Carter ordered McCammon to undergo psychiatric treatment and barred him from possessing pornographic material.

The victim in the case first complained about the incident to investigators in 1987, but the district attorney’s office declined to file charges against McCammon because of insufficient evidence, Prickett said.

McCammon denied the inmate’s allegations and charges by other inmates that he was stealing their money. The district attorney believed McCammon’s story, according to his defense attorney, Mike Cassidy.

But later that same year, McCammon was fired from his job. He sued the county over his dismissal and ultimately won a $25,000 award from the county, Cassidy said.

Then, two years after the sexual misconduct occurred, McCammon, accompanied by a bishop from the Mormon Church, turned himself in and confessed to having sex with inmates and stealing their money.

McCammon decided to confess his sins in an effort to be accepted back into the church, Prickett said.

The former deputy indicated to the judge that he planned to return the $25,000 to the county or give it to charity.

In sentencing McCammon to jail time, the judge agreed to allow him to serve the time in a city jail, where he would be safer and could work part time.