Inside Man: A Jailer Turns Informant

Summary

---

Crimes of the Times – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Inside Man: A Jailer Turns Informant

Podcast: Crimes of the Times (L.A. Times Studios)
Host: Christopher Goffard
Date: September 30, 2025

---

Brief Overview

This episode follows the rise and fall of James Sexton, once a promising deputy in the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. Sexton’s transition from a dedicated lawman to whistleblower—and ultimately to indicted felon—offers a rare, harrowing inside look at the pervasive culture of secrecy, loyalty, and corruption in one of America’s largest jail systems. Sexton’s journey exposes the personal cost of breaking the code of silence, and raises pointed questions about accountability at the highest levels of the Sheriff’s Department.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Sexton's Background and Early Conflicts

• Family Heritage: Son of a famed Alabama sheriff, James Sexton fought to distinguish himself within the L.A. Sheriff’s Department and shed the "brass baby" label ([00:42]).
• Early Loyalty Test: Sexton showed blind obedience in helping hide a federal informant (Anthony Brown) from the FBI—a decision he believed would remain buried ([00:42]–[01:50]).
• Quote – On betrayal:

  “Everybody loves the treason, but they hate the traitor. They hate the person that steps up and says, this is what we were doing behind the curtain.”
  — James Sexton ([00:05], [02:20])

---

The Peckerwoods Tip and Institutional Pushback

• Tip from Informant: While working for Operation Safe Jails, Sexton receives intelligence about a deputy passing a package to a skinhead gang leader ([01:50]–[02:20]).
• Stonewalling: His boss, Lieutenant Greg Thompson, orders him to write reports that "protected the accused jailer," effectively nullifying the investigation ([02:43]).
• Career Fallout: Reporting the misconduct marks Sexton as an outsider, leading to his ostracization ([03:14]–[04:18]).
• Quote – On the culture:

  “The culture is look the other way.”
  — James Sexton ([03:27])

---

Ostracization and Descent

• Hostility and Social Death: Sexton is shunned, labeled a "snitch," receives threats, and has a rat drawn on his locker ([04:35]).
  • He is called "Deputy Serpico" and fears for his safety, altering his routines ([05:41]).
• Betrayal by Leadership: He believes Sheriff Lee Baca’s hands-off management bred toxicity and left him vulnerable ([05:41]).
• Turning to Press: When ostracism escalates, Sexton goes to the media, indirectly triggering reforms but making himself a target ([05:41]–[06:23]).

---

FBI Contact and Paranoia

• Recruitment by FBI: Sexton is approached by the FBI via an acquaintance, warned his life may be in danger from both the Aryan Brotherhood and department insiders ([06:53]–[07:19]).
• Experienced Threats: Though never explicit, Sexton details the chilling methods of departmental retaliation—radio silence during dangerous situations, surveillance, and threats of being framed ([07:19]–[09:43]).
• Quiet Isolation:

  "Nobody’s gonna help you. When you would start to put out radio traffic or ask for support, nobody responds to you."
  — James Sexton ([07:39])

---

Cooperation with Federal Investigators

• Initial Reluctance: Fears "betraying" his agency; only turns after experiencing departmental surveillance and threats ([08:08]–[10:49]).
• Leah Marks, FBI Handler: Unexpectedly warm, disarming—a former social worker—she wins Sexton’s trust ([12:09]–[13:47]).
• Revelations: Sexton discloses systemic misconduct, notably the computer manipulation to hide Anthony Brown, and the broader culture of silence around use of force and informant management ([13:47]–[14:42]).

---

Downfall: Indictment and Aftermath

• Grand Jury Testimony: Sexton's own admissions caught him; acknowledges muddling timelines but insists his intent wasn’t obstruction ([14:56]–[15:17]).
• Tension with FBI and Prosecutors: Rejects wearing a wire on his father and Sheriff Baca ([15:24]), feels the FBI growing cold ([15:42]).
• Quote – On facing indictment:

  “I think I’m getting indicted.”
  — James Sexton ([15:42])

• Formal Charges: Becomes one of 18 deputies/officials indicted in a sweeping federal case—accused of conspiracy and obstruction ([16:36]–[17:24]).
• Public and Personal Humiliation: Experiences widespread hostility, including from his Alabama hometown; narratives of "hope you die" and calls for prison rape ([18:58]–[19:43]).
• Quote – On the hate:

  "Hope you die. Hope you...people wanted me to get prison raped, and they wanted that, and they didn’t even know me."
  — James Sexton ([19:06])

• Refusal to Plea: Rejects misdemeanor deal to avoid jail, clings to his cop identity, and goes to trial ([20:45]–[21:09]).
• Conviction: Initially a hung jury; upon retrial, convicted and sentenced to 18 months ([23:13]).

---

Post-Conviction and Reflection

• Incarceration: Goes to Alabama to serve his sentence; is assaulted in jail ([24:09]–[24:35]).
• Father's Pain: Remotely visits with his father, who breaks down in tears when seeing him in custody ([24:35]).
• Letting Go: Realizes his life as a cop is over and must adapt to survive prison. Many of his peers choose suicide; he’s determined not to ([23:37]–[24:09]).
• Quote – On surviving:

  “I’m a felon, I won’t be a cop, and I will survive.”
  — James Sexton ([23:37])

---

Unanswered Questions and Systemic Failure

• Broader Accountability: The episode closes with questions about why higher-ranking officials—namely Undersheriff Paul Tanaka and Sheriff Lee Baca—were never indicted, despite directing or overseeing operations ([25:07]–[26:31]).
• Sheriff Baca’s Response:

  “We have too much to do than putting prisoners who are at risk in a position where they are trusted more than I am. I am not going to accept that.”
  — Sheriff Lee Baca ([26:31])

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• On speaking out:

  “Everybody loves the treason, but they hate the traitor.” — James Sexton ([00:05])

• On institutional culture:

  “The culture is look the other way.” — James Sexton ([03:27])

• On being ostracized:

  “It's one of the mortal sins in the sheriff’s department... They look through you, they look at you, they'll look at disdain. And you catch that over and over and over and over again and you start to break down.” — James Sexton ([04:43])

• On FBI overtures:

  “You're still part of this cancer.” — Sexton, recalling the FBI’s attitude ([14:42])

• On personal collapse:

  “I became a man without a country. I became ostracized.” — James Sexton ([04:18])

• On trial and identity:

  “You're looking at a young man's desperate attempt to hold onto something that was his identity at the time.” — James Sexton ([21:09])

• On conviction:

  “I wrote three things down when I got convicted and it meant a lot to me and it's, I'm a felon, I won't be a cop, and I will survive.” — James Sexton ([23:37])

• On the system’s failures:

  “Why was the federal government prosecuting a foot soldier like Sexton but had not indicted the so called generals?” — Christopher Goffard ([25:07])

---

Important Timestamps

• 00:05–03:27: Sexton’s early career, Peckerwoods tip, and first acts of whistleblowing
• 04:18–06:23: Social ostracism and turning point; media involvement
• 06:42–10:49: FBI contact, threats, and psychological ordeal
• 12:09–15:17: Sexton becomes an informant; revelations to the FBI
• 15:42–17:24: Indictment and public fallout
• 20:45–23:37: Trial, conviction, and self-reflection
• 24:09–25:07: Imprisonment and family impact
• 25:07–26:31: Lack of prosecution for executive leadership; broader questions

---

Summary & Tone

The episode maintains a gritty, introspective tone, alternately angry, wounded, bitter, and reflective. Sexton’s narrative is raw—he owns his missteps while underscoring the psychological toll of being both an insider and an outcast. The reporting is incisive but empathetic, challenging listeners to consider not only personal responsibility but also the cultural rot that permeates powerful institutions.

---

For Further Listening

The episode ends with the promise that future installments will examine the fate of higher-ups and the eventual downfall of Sheriff Lee Baca.

Transcript

[A]

Everybody loves the treason, but they hate the traitor. They hate the person that steps up and says, this is what we were doing behind the curtain. This is what was going on inside the LA County Jail. I became a man without a country. I heard you're a snitch. I heard you're a rat. It was the first of probably three times that I wept because I was starting to process the fall from grace. I'd worked hard not to be a sheriff's son. I had worked hard to be considered a worker.

[B]

At the LA County Sheriff's Department. James Sexton had struggled to shed his image as a so called brass baby. He was the son of a decorated lawman, the longtime sheriff of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, who happened to be a close friend of LA Sheriff Lee Baca, who was now Sexton's boss at the county jail. Sexton had learned to obey orders uncritically and he had passed a big test of loyalty. With his mastery of the jail computer system, he had helped his bosses hide a federal informant from the FBI. He thought the episode was behind him forever. He had just done what he was told, he says, trusting that his bosses had his back, trusting the command structure at an institution he had learned not to defy. But now, on an unrelated case six months later, he felt the institution was betraying him. It was early 2012 and he was scared. As a member of the elite jail intelligence unit called Operation Safe Jails, Sexton's job was to cultivate inmate informants at Men's Central Jail downtown. And one of his best informants had given him an incendiary tip. The informant said a jail deputy had given a mysterious package to an inmate who held a high rank in a skinhead gang called the San Fernando Valley Peckerwoods. According to the informant, the Peckerwoods boss had had offered to hook the jailer up with free tattoos at a local parlor with ties to drug smuggling.

[A]

This is a tough saying because it has a negative connotation, but everybody loves the treason, but they hate the traitor. They hate the messenger. They hate the person that steps up and says, this is what we were doing behind the curtain. This is what was going on inside the LA County Jail. There was some dark stuff going on there.

[B]

Sexton put the Peckerwoods tip in a memo to his boss, the head of jail intelligence, Lieutenant Greg Thompson. But he says Lieutenant Thompson undermined any possibility of a productive investigation by ordering him to write up his reports in a way that protected the accused jailer, who was then allowed to see the unredacted reports.

[A]

Those unredacted reports very clearly laid out that I documented, investigated misconduct by somebody in the LA county jail.

[B]

Sexton says his decision to report the allegation and his lieutenant's mishandling of it was fatal to his career at the sheriff's department. He knew he would never be trusted again.

[A]

The culture is look the other way.

[B]

Sexton says he told his father about it, but it didn't help. Soon afterward, he confronted Lieutenant Thompson about it in the parking lot.

[A]

And he was like, you better learn how to shut the up and quit telling your dad war stories. And I looked at him and that's a threat. That's a threat. I shut up. I stewed. I didn't know what to do.

[B]

From the Los Angeles Times. This is Pandora's box. The fall of LA's sheriff. I'm Christopher Goffard. This is episode four, Inside Man.

[A]

I became a man without a country. I became ostracized. The snide comments in the hallway and people not helping you anymore, you lose your tribe. February of 2012. I'm racing to the end of my career. Now. That's the downhill slot. I'm in free fall.

[B]

Word was circulating that James Sexton had accused a fellow jail deputy of being in league with a skinhead gang.

[A]

You know, it's the banter, it's the, hey, bro, you know, it's the, you know, I want to talk to you about something. I heard you're a snitch. I heard you're a rat. You know, it's one of the mortal sins in the sheriff's department. I'd get a rat drawn on my locker a lot with the black dry erase marker, snitch piece of shit. So that would happen. But the majority of people are just silent. The silence, that's what hurts. That lack of interaction, that lack of being a part of the tribe, that knowing that you've been excommunicated, they look through you, they look at you, they'll look at disdain. And you catch that over and over and over and over again and you start to break down. I had one sergeant Openly call me Mr. Serpico. Deputy Serpico. Deputy Serpico. I am surprised you show up to work every single day. I parked in different places, used different entrances and exits.

[B]

Sexton says he became enraged at Sheriff Lee Baca because he thought Baca had failed to protect him and that the sheriff's hands off management style had created a toxic culture. Sexton is proud of what he did next, though it cost him Dearly. As the atmosphere worsened, he blew the whistle. He talked to The Press. In August 2012, my former Times colleague Robert Federechi published a story about Sexton and a bungled handling of the tip he'd passed on. After the story ran, Lieutenant Thompson was removed from his job as boss of jail intelligence. And it put a brighter spotlight on Sexton.

[A]

Oh, that brought a miserably high profile. You know, I thought I was in hell.

[B]

Sexton says his life got increasingly uncomfortable. Deputies showed up at his house, he says, to give him a drug test. He got an unexpected call from an old acquaintance, Patrick, who worked for the FBI at the Los Angeles field office.

[A]

Hey, buddy, want to get together? All that. And I was like, patrick, cut the shit. What do you want to talk about? I want to introduce you to Leah Marks.

[B]

Until then, Sexton had not known the name of the FBI agents spearheading the federal investigation of the county jails, had not known that Liam Arx had been poking around the jail since the summer of 2010. Sexton was nervous when he met the acquaintance for dinner.

[A]

He's just trying to talk about my life being in danger, and the FBI can help. And I was very leery. I knew I was in danger, absolutely.

[B]

I asked him where the danger to his life was supposed to be coming.

[A]

From at the time. Unidentified LA county sheriff's deputies and the Aryan Brotherhood that they wouldn't go into any more detail. We need you to come in and talk about it. I rejected at the first pass.

[B]

I asked him if he got any explicit threats.

[A]

Nobody's gonna walk up to you and say, we're gonna kill you. That's not how that works. But, you know, you need to watch your back. You need to be careful. Nobody's gonna help you. When you would start to put out radio traffic or ask for support, nobody responds to you.

[B]

At one point, he says he asked a veteran detective if he had any future at the LA Sheriff's Department and got a blunt answer.

[A]

Knowing everything I'm doing, would you work a radio car with me? And he was like, nope.

[B]

Still going to the FBI seemed unthinkable. He did not want to betray his agency to the feds. But they kept making overtures, trying to find out if he might help their ongoing jail probe. Sexton was the ultimate inside man, and he began to wonder if there might be a lifeline in the people that he had long regarded as enemies. Says the sheriff's department was tailing him. He says he caught them watching him one night while he was at a Chevron station in Marina Del Rey, near where he was living.

[A]

What tipped me off to this particular one was a guy pulled up to the gas pump and I recognized that he was on the wrong side of the pump and he was trying to block it. And I was in a drive through. It was a Chevron right there. Yeah. So that's how I caught it. I catch the surveillance and I knew I was in trouble then. You have a surveillance on you. They are trying to. They're trying to put you in jail.

[B]

That was only one grim possibility he envisioned. He feared fellow sheriff's deputies might put him in a position where he got shot. They might kill him at a traffic stop. They might plant something on him.

[A]

If you gotta get arrested by anybody, the feds, okay, like. But our department, you know, they're trying to put you in a felony t stop and get you to make a dumb move with your gun. That is that road. That is plant dope and kiddie porn and make an allegation that if it doesn't stick.

[B]

So what you actually fear that there were deputies on duty at the Sheriff's Department who were so intent on discrediting you and destroying you that they would plant drugs in your car or kiddie.

[A]

Porn in a computer?

[B]

In a computer?

[A]

My work computer? Yes.

[B]

Maybe even provoke you into a deputy shooting?

[A]

Yes. I love the LA County Sheriff's Department, but I absolutely abhor this part of it. It's such a night and day department.

[B]

How would you define this part of it?

[A]

I mean, the absolute underbelly, the worst part of what it is capable of and what it has done in the past.

[B]

It's important to note that no proof ever emerged that anyone at the Sheriff's Department was looking to frame or kill James Sexton. But he says that was in his mind at the time and that's what made him reconsider the FBI's overtures.

[A]

I'm going after Lee Baca as a deputy from within with knowledge of cases that he directed. There's a lot of foundation to have me silenced and suppressed. Yes. I really in my core believed that the department was seeking a narrative to. Best case scenario, get me out of the department. Worst case scenario, kill me. I want to be clear about the department. The actual LA County Sheriff's Department on duty would never do that. But remember, it is an institution made up of people and there are plenty of people in the department that would find scenarios on or off duty to make that happen. That is not a beast I wanted to entangle myself with and so that's when I reached out and said, let me talk to Leah Marx.

[B]

FBI agent Leah Marks had been investigating the LA county jails for the last two years in an interview setting. She had some of the same skills that James Sexton often used to his advantage. A disarming, friendly, low pressure quality that belied the seriousness of what she was after.

[A]

I met Leah Marks and not what I expected. I was expecting this really, like, hard, strident woman. And I got a social worker. You gotta love the calculation of the FBI. She is easy to talk to. She talked like a friend, she acted like a friend. I should have been smarter.

[B]

Liam Arks, who actually had been a social worker before joining the bureau, became his handler as he began working as an informant for the FBI. Under her questioning, he told what he knew about the workings of the county jail, how use of force complaints were mishandled, how the culture encouraged cops to look the other way.

[A]

She just didn't feel like a cop. She didn't act like a cop. And by the way, that's a great handler. My walls are up, right? I'm, I'm not gonna react well to a male of the sheriff's department. Leah was able to not only get over that wall or get through that wall, but get me talking. I saw her as an advocate, an ally, and she was in the way that she wanted to take down the LA County Sheriff's Department. But my ignorance and being naive, you know, I went with it because they treated me like royalty at first and I bought the bullshit for a quick second.

[B]

He says he was surprised when she started asking him about Anthony Brown, the inmate he'd made vanish in the jail computer so the feds couldn't find him. He thought Brown was of relatively small consequence. No real harm had come to him. He was in prison serving life, where he had been heading all along to the FBI. Sexton's account would clarify much that had been mysterious and about what had happened during those 18 days Brown was missing. Sexton talked to the FBI dozens of times. Working deep inside the jails, he knew how law enforcement regarded informants. Informants were indispensable but often looked down upon. And now he suspected the feds were looking at him the same way. Not as a whistleblowing hero, not as one of them, but as a snitch.

[A]

I had a hard time with this psychologically as I started talking to the FBI. You know, they think you're a piece of shit. You're still part of this gang, you're still part of this criminal Element. You're still part of this thing that we're investigating. That is not a good thing. You're still part of the cancer.

[B]

Late in 2012, Sexton told a federal grand jury about Operation Pandora's Box. He described how he had manipulated the jail computers to hide Brown, an admission that would hurt him severely. Sexton tells me that he inadvertently muddled the timeline, conflating what he learned later with what he knew at the time of the operation.

[A]

I was not doing it to circumvent the FBI. That was not my state of mind.

[B]

Sexton says the FBI asked him to wear a wire, that they wanted him to secretly record a conversation between his father and Lee Baca. Sexton says he refused. Afterward, when he paid a Visit to the FBI's Wilshire Boulevard office, he says the agents would not look him in the eye.

[A]

The body language was like, I was at my own funeral. Leah Marks, all of them, like they didn't have much to say. They didn't ask a lot of questions. And I remember I called my attorney, and I was like, that was the weirdest meeting I've ever had with the FBI. I was like, I think I'm getting indicted.

[B]

At one point, federal prosecutor Brandon Fox gave him what he later understood to be a warning.

[A]

He said, we are at an inflection point. We are at a juncture. We don't know what to do with you. Mr. Sexton and I should have read that loud and clear and been like, we don't know to indict you or not indict you. But I was still in young asshole mode and wanted to tell them that I didn't care, and I was not an easy person, and I was trying to hang on to an identity that was leaving me no matter what, and that was being a cop.

[B]

He had recently gotten married when he got a call from his lawyer in December 2013, and he said, I got some bad news.

[A]

You're going to be indicted today. I went to work. I was doing my rounds. The department was swirling. I was on 5000 floor the first time I saw my picture on the news. I was in the jail when I saw on the news. And I remember everybody was like, dog. Foreign.

[B]

The U.S. attorney's first major thrust against the sheriff's department. James Sexton was one of 18 current or former sworn members charged with civil rights violations, corruption, inmate abuse, or obstruction. Lt. Gregory Thompson, who had been Sexton's boss in jail Intelligence, was indicted along with another lieutenant. So were the two sergeants who had confronted Leah Marks outside Her home. Sheriff Lee Baca issued a press release saying he tolerated no corruption. He said, quote, we have cooperated fully with the federal investigation and will continue to do so.

[A]

I went and got fingerprinted and had my picture taken in a suit. I still don't understand the magnitude of what is about to happen to me. I get called up to the office by my sergeant and he said, hey, buddy, you gotta go home. We gotta come to your house and collect all your stuff. You need to go home. We are going to relieve you of duty. You're not a cop anymore. I was like, oh, God, this is happening now. It was the first of probably three times that I wept because I was starting to process the fall from grace and how it would happen. I turned over my case folder, I jumped in the car, and I headed home and I wept.

[B]

The news of his indictment was carried in his hometown, Tuscaloosa, where his dad had been sheriff for more than 20 years.

[A]

You read the comments and, like, it was tough, man. And I don't. I'm not saying this because I want anybody to feel bad for me, just on a human level, like the hate. Hope you die. Hope you. You know, people wanted me to get prison raped, and they wanted that, and they didn't even know me. And it's people that have no clue what the reality of prison rape is. You know, I mean, I know what that is. I know what that looks like. I know what that does to somebody. And that somebody would root for me to go through that hurt.

[B]

An internal affairs detective came to his house with a sergeant to collect his things. Sexton surrendered his Beretta, two magazines of ammo, the flat badge he kept in his wallet, his department issued car, and his radio. He says the detective began belittling him.

[A]

You're being cocky, Sexton. You got, you know, basically you got what you deserve. And I had a great sergeant, and my sarge was like, dude, knock it off. This kid is getting indicted. We're here to collect his entire career. Knock it off. I said, this probably means nothing to you. I was like, but, you know, I'm going through just short of the death of a parent or something of that gravity, and you're dragging me across the bottom. You're in my house, you're in my kitchen. And the worst part of my worst thing that could happen to my life other than that, and you're disrespecting me.

[B]

He says the prosecutor offered to let him plead guilty to a misdemeanor, meaning he might not have to spend any time behind bars. But Sexton rejected the deal. He did not want to admit that he'd broken the law and deliberately obstructed the FBI probe. He wanted to keep his badge. It was hard to imagine life as anything other than a cop.

[A]

You're looking at a young man's desperate attempt to hold onto something that that was his identity at the time. And that's really my fatal flaw in all that. You know, I couldn't let it go.

[B]

The majority of people charged in the federal system, cop fleas. Just fighting the charges can be financially ruinous. Sexton's family had money, which meant he could hire a top flight defense attorney. So Sexton went to trial facing two felonies, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors portrayed him as a man whose intimate knowledge of the inmate booking system made him instrumental in the Smoke and Mirror scheme to hide Anthony Brown. Defense attorney Thomas o' Brien said Sexton had been caught in a nasty jurisdictional battle between agencies, a turf war between the LA Sheriff's Department and the FBI, and argued that he was basically a foot soldier following orders at the bottom of a quasi military organization. He'd been on the job just three years when it had happened. But prosecutors pointed to Sexton's grand jury testimony in which he admitted that he knew the feds were looking for Anthony Brown. Here's Brandon Fox.

[A]

And he said that there was an effort to hide Anthony Brown from the feds. What he basically said was they knew what they were doing was illegal committing a crime, including Sexton himself.

[B]

Sexton's attorney said his client had been an overeager kid trying to help the FBI, that he had been puffing himself up, that he was living in a fantasy land. His lawyer compared him to Walter Mitte, the character with a boring office job who escapes into elaborate imaginative worlds.

[A]

Yeah, I hated the Walter Mitte defense. My defense attorney has to frame me up as somebody relatable to a juror. And so basically it's James is crazy. And I mean, I hated it.

[B]

When the jury deadlocked, prosecutors took him to trial again. This time he was convicted. The judge declared Sexton totally unrepentant about his role in the obstruction scheme and gave him an 18 month term. At 29 years old, the lawman's son had upwards of $2 million in legal bills and he was heading to federal prison.

[A]

I wrote three things down when I got convicted and it meant a lot to me and it's, I'm a felon, I won't be a cop, and I will Survive. I think it would have been toxic to try to live as a cop the rest of my life. So I knew that I had to, like, I knew I had to let that go. Look, I've had friends kill themselves and I had to come to terms with it pretty quick. I knew I was going to prison. You can't talk like a cop, act like a cop. So you, you've got to start internalizing that now or that's going to hurt you.

[B]

James Sexton went to Alabama, his home state, and turned himself in to begin his 18 month sentence. He was taken through the county jail in Montgomery where he says the sheriff's deputies took him for a child molester. Since he was in the red jumpsuit denoting protective custody, he says they took him to a shower area without cameras and gave him a beating.

[A]

The cruel irony of it is I'm not in jail six hours and I get my ass beat. My very first visit was my father. It was a remote visit. I try to stay positive on everything, I really do. And I remember the screen kicked on and my dad just broke down. I mean, it's tough to see your father weep. And I told him, you know, hey man, get your shit together, we got a few more of these.

[B]

Sexton was the first and most junior of the sheriff's deputies to go on trial. The other six sheriff's deputies accused in the obstruction case, including two sergeants and two lieutenants, would be convicted at a separate trial and they got sentences ranging from 21 to 41 months in prison. During trial, Sexton's lawyer had asked jurors a why was the federal government prosecuting a foot soldier like Sexton but had not indicted the so called generals, the higher ups who had directed Operation Pandora's Box? For many watching the case, this was a persistent question. Why were there no charges against Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, Sheriff Baca's hard charging much feared right hand man. Was it really possible that the whole scheme to thwart and intimidate the FBI had unfolded without his knowledge? What about the sheriff himself who insisted his agency was qualified to investigate wrongdoing in its ranks? The man who had taken office promising to reform the scandal ridden behemoth that was the LA Sheriff's Department? On the next episode of Pandora's Box, the fall of LA's sheriff.

[A]

I would not have subjected the FBI to me saying I don't trust them. That is unacceptable to me. Okay? We have too much to do, we have too much to do than putting prisoners who are at risk in a position where they are trusted more than I am. I am not going to accept that.

[B]

Pandora's Box the fall of LA's sheriff was written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Gofford for the Los Angeles Times Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Our editor is Steve Clow. Special thanks to LA Times Executive Editor Terry Tang, President and COO Chris Argenteri, and LA Times Studios President Anna Magzanian. Special thanks to LA Times colleagues past and present who have reported on the Sheriff's Department and its staff scandals, including Robert Federechi, Jack Leonard, Joel Rubin, Cindy Chang, Ben Poston, Eline Chekmedian, Connor Sheets and Carrie Blakener.

[A]

Sam.