Former prosecutor and defense lawyer Paul Bergrin was sentenced on Monday to six life terms in prison for facilitating murder, running drugs and operating a criminal syndicate out of his Newark law firm, New York Law Journal reported.
Certain factors were "signficantly outweighed by the severity of the defendant's crimes and made more reprehensible" by his status as a prosecutor and a defense attorney, according to U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh.
"A message must be sent to those who might engage in this kind of behavior. He went from successful attorney and family man to a life of self-destruction," Cavanaugh said.
Evidence proved that Bergrin helped to arrange the shooting death of FBI informant Kemo Deshawn McCray, who had been a witness against his client, William Baskerville, in a drug case.
The rogue lawyer also was convicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, as he used his law firm to devise criminal activity, the New York Law Journal reported.
All of these convictions carried mandatory life imprisonment terms. Bergrin has been in jail since his arrest in 2009 along with several other defendants, including another attorney. All have pleaded guilty, and several testified against him over the course of two trials.
For his part Bergrin said that he was "ashamed...embarassed... and humiliated..." before being sentenced. Regardless, he maintained his innocence, news reports said.
John Gay, an assistant U.S. Attorney and deputy chief of the Criminal defense called Bergrin a "lawyer cloaked in legitimacy [who] woke up every morning on a mission to beat the system."
