While former Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith managed to avoid a prison sentence for her role in a corrupt scheme to grant rarely-issued carry permits to those wiling to fork over cash and prizes to the sheriff's department and a campaign bolstering her re-election bid, one of her top underlings will be spending at least a few months behind bars for his actions. 

Former Santa Clara County Sheriff's Captain James Jensen was sentenced to ten months in jail on Monday after a judge in San Jose turned down his request for a new trial. Jensen was convicted of felony bribery and conspiracy charges in a criminal trial in July, while his former boss was convicted of corruption and misconduct in a civil trial in March. 

At a sentencing hearing Monday, Judge Nahal Iravani-Sani also ordered Jensen to serve two years of probation and perform 150 hours of community service with a gun-safety organization.

The judge’s sentence in many ways split the difference between the requests from Jensen’s attorneys, who sought probation only, and the district attorney’s office, which asked that Jensen be given a 16-month prison term in part to deter other public officials from engaging in similar crimes.

Iravani-Sani considered how Jensen was a high-ranking commander, saying Monday that the “position in which the breach of trust (occurred) is especially egregious.”

The judge added that “it is my hope the sentence will serve as a reminder of the high standards” expected of law enforcement officers and other public officials. 

But the judge said she also weighed Jensen’s absence of a criminal record, how his crimes did not yield personal financial gain, and his losses to date — of his job, police career and part of his pension — in reaching her sentencing decision. The courtroom gallery was occupied by more than two-dozen family members and supporters of Jensen, including his wife, who asked the judge for leniency on behalf of their two young daughters.

The judge also allowed Jensen to remain at home with his family over the holidays, ordering him to return to court on January 6 so he can surrender to jail officials. 

I won't shed any tears for Jensen, though I'll admit it does irk me that Smith herself isn't facing any time behind bars for her role in the pay-to-play scandal. In fact, Jensen's attorneys raised that fact with the judge in their request for a new trial, arguing that she was the one who benefitted from his actions and that the lack of criminal charges against her revealed a disparity in the prosecutions. 

Smith invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when testifying before a criminal grand jury, and prosecutors chose to take her case to a civil jury instead. Smith ended up resigning as Santa Clara County Sheriff shortly before the civil jury issued its guilty verdict earlier this year, but both Jensen and former undersheriff Rick Sung were both indicted criminally. 

In fact, Smith's underlings are still awaiting trial in another case stemming from the same pay-to-play scandal. 

He and former undersheriff Rick Sung are accused of arranging a large donation of iPads to the sheriff’s office with Apple security executive Thomas Moyer to expedite CCW permits for a group of the company’s security employees. That case and a separate but related bribery indictment are both scheduled for trial in February.

In the trial that concluded this year, Jensen was portrayed by prosecutors as a close adviser to Smith and a linchpin in a ploy that brokered the coveted CCW permits in backroom deals while largely ignoring applications from ordinary citizens. The practice was buoyed by the wide discretion state law once gave to sheriffs and police chiefs, and which has since been curtailed by U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling that outlawed “good cause” tests for the gun licenses.

Though the demise of California's "may issue" scheme has ostensibly put an end to the corruption surrounding the issuance of carry permits, Santa Clara County officials are still doing everything they can to stop ordinary citizens from exercising their right to bear arms. The county's supervisors recently approved a request by new sheriff Bob Johnson to jack up the fees for a carry permit to $976, with renewals costing gun owners an additional $447 every two years. That doesn't cover the cost of fingerprinting and a psychological exam, which is also required before Santa Clara County residents can submit their carry permit application, so the true cost of carrying will be well over $1,000.

The country has gone from illegal corruption and graft to officially sanctioned highway robbery when it comes to concealed carry. I guess that's a slight improvement from what took place under Smith's tenure in office, but the county still has a long way to go before gun owners can get a fair shake from the powers that be.