Former Suffolk DA Thomas Spota released from federal prison on police beating cover-up

Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota has been released from a federal prison in Connecticut, less than three years into his 5-year sentence for conspiring to cover up a police beating of a handcuffed prisoner, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons officials.

Spota, 82, of Mount Sinai, was transferred July 11 from the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury to the "community confinement" overseen by the New York Residential Reentry Management Office, Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Scott Taylor told Newsday.

"Community confinement means the individual is in either home confinement or [a halfway house]," Taylor said. "For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not disclose an individual's specific location in community confinement."

Spota is due to be released from federal custody in March. His attorney, Anthony La Pinta, of Hauppauge, declined to comment.

In 2019, a jury convicted Spota and his former anti-corruption chief, Christopher McPartland, of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and acting as accessories to the deprivation of prisoner Christopher Loeb's civil rights.

The jury found that McPartland and Spota conspired to cover up Loeb’s beating that then-Suffolk police Chief James Burke carried out with three detectives. The assault inside a Suffolk police precinct happened after Loeb, then a drug addict, broke into Burke’s vehicle and stole items that included his gun belt, Viagra, pornography and sex toys. Both McPartland and Spota were sentenced to 5 years in prison.

One of the detectives who participated in the Loeb beating, then-Det. Anthony Leto, recalled Burke punching, kneeing and shaking Loeb by his ears while also threatening to give the then-heroin addict a "hot shot" — a deadly drug dose.

Before that, Leto said, he and Dets. Kenneth Bombace and Michael Malone hit Loeb while trying to get him to confess.

Prosecutors called Spota the "CEO" of the conspiracy, while McPartland was the scheme's "chief operating officer" and "architect of the lies," who helped Burke craft a cover story about Loeb being a "junkie thief."

Loeb pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon, but state Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro later vacated the plea after special prosecutor William Ferris ruled the plea was unjustly coerced and tainted by police perjury.

Both Spota and McPartland their sentences in December 2021 after exhausting repeated attempts to remain free on bail while pursuing their appeals. A federal appeals court affirmed their convictions last August.

At his August 2021 sentencing before U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack, Spota said he hoped "not to die in prison alone."

Spota added that he felt deep anguish for the shame that his conviction brought to his family.

"I’ve also left them with a shattered legacy and the stain of being a convicted felon," the former district attorney said. "My family will forever be marked by my disgrace."

Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence McPartland and Spota to 8 years each in prison, citing the "egregiousness" of their conduct given their positions of authority in the law enforcement community.

McPartland was moved to a halfway house last December and was released from federal custody on May 2, federal prison records show. He since has returned to his home in Northport, according to a recent court filing.

Burke served most of a 46-month prison sentence before his release to a halfway house after pleading guilty in 2016 to conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice and the deprivation of Loeb’s rights.

Burke was arrested again in September and charged with public lewdness and indecent exposure for allegedly exposing himself to an undercover Suffolk County park ranger. He is due back in court next month on that matter, court records show.

Spota won his former position in a 2001 election. He resigned one day after being indicted in October 2017.

The government emphasized during closing arguments in the six-week federal trial that a strong bond existed between Spota and Burke, starting when Burke was the star teenage witness in a murder case Spota was prosecuting.

Then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Treinis Gatz told jurors Spota had "a history of protecting and covering up for Jimmy Burke," noting an internal affairs investigation before he was named chief of department.

Spota’s then-defense attorney, Alan Vinegrad, maintained at trial that Spota couldn’t have tried to conceal Burke’s guilt because the former police chief never confessed before admitting his crimes in February 2016 in federal court.

Much of the government’s case rested on star prosecution witness James Hickey, a retired Suffolk police lieutenant who had headed the department’s criminal intelligence unit. He testified that he was a middleman in the conspiracy and ensured the silence of three of his detectives who had taken part in Loeb’s 2012 beating.

Suffolk County in 2018 agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit brought by Loeb. Under the terms of the agreement, the county admitted no wrongdoing and was released from additional liability in connection with the beating.

With Vera Chinese and Nicole Fuller

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.