Judge Sentenced for Aiding Mobster : Courts: Robert P. Aguilar gets six months for telling a suspect his phone was tapped and for lying to the FBI.

U.S. District Judge Robert P. Aguilar was sentenced Thursday to six months in prison for obstruction of justice for lying to FBI agents and leaking word to an aging mobster that he was being wiretapped.

U.S. District Judge Louis Bechtle of Philadelphia imposed far less prison time than prosecutors had sought. But he told Aguilar that an obstruction of justice conviction “by a judge, no less, is a chilling message indeed.”

Bechtle acknowledged that under federal sentencing guidelines, he could have sent Aguilar to prison for 27 months and fined him $50,000. Prosecutors had wanted Bechtle to impose an even harsher sentence.

But explaining the lesser terms, Bechtle said Aguilar will have to endure “a long course of adversarial proceedings,” probably including impeachment by Congress and disbarment by the State Bar Assn.

“These proceedings will be long and humiliating and embarrassing and burdensome, a major and substantial punishment,” Bechtle said.

Aguilar, 59, looked surprised when Bechtle read the sentence, which also included a fine of $2,100 and 1,000 hours of community service upon his release. But Aguilar, who will remain free pending his appeal, left the federal courthouse beaming, flanked by supporters.

“It’s a tremendous loss for the government,” said Paul Meltzer, Aguilar’s lawyer. Aguilar had been charged in June, 1989, with racketeering and could have faced life imprisonment if he had been convicted of all eight counts in the original indictment. As it was, he was convicted of two lesser counts.

“I’m thrilled. It’s the next best thing to an acquittal,” Meltzer said.

Prosecutors William A. Keefer and Sara M. Lord refused to comment after sentencing. In asking for a lengthy prison term, they had charged that the San Jose jurist “abused his position of public trust” and lied repeatedly when he testified during his trial in August.

Aguilar did not comment in court or outside, except to note that Meltzer was speaking for him. Meltzer and his co-counsel, Peter Leeming, had asked for probation, with at most a sentence of community service. But the defense knew that Bechtle, who had been tough throughout the proceedings, could have jailed Aguilar on Thursday.

Bechtle directed that Aguilar serve his time in a minimum security prison camp in Duluth, Minn. Meltzer said the designation may have been a concession to concerns about Aguilar’s safety. A Colombian drug dealer who once appeared before Aguilar put out a murder contract on him.

In arguing for probation, Meltzer recounted how Aguilar, one of only a handful of Latinos on the federal bench, pulled himself out of poverty, put himself through college and law school and often gave free legal advice to poor people when he was a lawyer in San Jose during the 1960s and ‘70s.

“He knows he has disappointed thousands of people who looked to him as a role model,” Meltzer said.

Aguilar, appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, became only the third federal judge sentenced to a federal prison. Judge Walter Nixon of Mississippi was sentenced in 1986 to five years for a perjury conviction, and Harry Claiborne of Las Vegas was sentenced in 1984 to 18 months for tax evasion.

Aguilar is the first federal judge in California to have been found guilty of a crime. He will draw his salary of $97,570 until Congress impeaches him, which is the only way to oust him from what otherwise is a lifetime position. No impeachment move is expected until his appeal is decided, Meltzer said.

In his trial, jurors found Aguilar obstructed justice by leaking word in February, 1988, to Abe Chapman, 84, a family friend who had a criminal record dating back to the 1930s, that Chapman’s telephone was being tapped.

The jury also found Aguilar obstructed justice when he lied to FBI agents later in 1988. They had asked him about his efforts to intervene on behalf of former Teamsters leader Rudy Tham, 67, who was trying to persuade another federal judge to reverse a 1980 conviction for embezzling $2,000 from a Teamsters local.

The jury acquitted Aguilar of three other charges, including the main conspiracy count in which he was accused of attempting to influence U.S. District Judge Stanley Weigel to overturn Tham’s conviction.

Tham was convicted of conspiracy in a separate trial for his attempts to influence Aguilar.

Bechtle sentenced Tham on Thursday to 18 months in prison and fined him $20,000 for his role in the Aguilar case. Tham already is in prison, serving a five-year term for parole violation from his original embezzlement conviction. Aguilar’s conviction came on a retrial. Jurors in his first trial, held in March, failed to reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared. For the retrial, prosecutors threw out three charges, including one that he turned his chambers into a racketeering enterprise.

In urging that he be sentenced to more than the maximum, prosecutors cited several acts they did not prove in court. They also accused Aguilar of lying repeatedly in his testimony. He made a “preposterous claim” to the jury that he thought the FBI had been wiretapping him for seven years, they said. He made the statement to “impact emotionally on the untutored” jurors.

Aguilar’s troubles began when law enforcement officers who were on an organized crime investigation spotted him having lunch with Chapman in 1987. The head of the FBI in San Francisco told Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Peckham about the sighting.

Hoping to warn Aguilar to stay clear of Chapman, Peckham told Aguilar at a cocktail party that the FBI had a wiretap on Chapman. Instead, Aguilar told his nephew, Steve Aguilar, who relayed the information to Chapman.