The Associated Press
MIAMI (AP) - A man was sentenced to four years’ prison for conspiring in a perjury plot to boost the chance of convicting four Miami police officers accused of beating him.
Alexander Anazco was sentenced Friday after he pleaded guilty in July to six counts, including obstruction of justice and making false statements, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami said.
His father, Asbert Anazco, pleaded guilty to charges including obstruction of justice and witness tampering in the scheme. A third man involved in the plot, family friend Armando Rodriguez, pleaded guilty in May to perjury and conspiracy. They are awaiting sentencing.
Rodriguez was the government’s opening witness in a police brutality case and was still on the stand in the officers’ retrial when he admitted lying. The retrial ended in January with dismissal of the charges and public embarrassment for federal prosecutors, one of whom quit a short time later.
Alexander Anazco claimed he had been beaten for throwing a rock at a patrol car.
The three men concocted an alibi for the rock-throwing incident a month after the beating. Rodriguez wrote a receipt and testified that Alexander Anazco’s car was in his Hialeah brake shop the night someone in the car threw a rock at a Miami police car. That was two days before Alexander Anazco’s arrest.
Rodriguez initially said he wasn’t friends with Alexander Anazco, but in the retrial, he acknowledged being a longtime friend when the defense confronted him with reports showing he was one of his regular jail visitors.