Najee Ali, known as an outspoken critic of law enforcement, was sentenced to four years in state prison Monday after pleading guilty to trying to bribe a witness in his daughter's criminal case.
The 45-year-old former gang member turned community activist tried to tamper with a witness in January outside his daughter's preliminary hearing in Alhambra, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.
He was charged March 11 with attempting to intimidate and bribe a witness. But prosecutors later dismissed the intimidation charge.
Jasmin Eskew, Ali's daughter, is awaiting trial on two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of leaving the scene of an accident stemming from an incident in July 2007 involving her vehicle and a group of motorcyclists on the San Bernardino Freeway, Gibbons said.
Ali would have received two years in prison, but a prior robbery conviction in 1992 doubled his time to four years, Gibbons said. The judge also found that Ali had violated his probation in a 2004 case in which he was convicted of felony hit-and-run and perjury.
"Mr. Ali has still not paid $29,240 in restitution in that case," Gibbons said.
Some of Ali's fellow activists said Monday they were stunned by the news and the length of his sentence.
"I'm shocked. I knew he would get some prison time. But I didn't expect it to be that harsh," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a political analyst who heads the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. "He was the most visible, outspoken voice of community activism in L.A. . . . I had my differences with him, but I respected him."
But others said they were not surprised by Ali's fate.
"Najee Ali had been on the wrong side of the law pretty consistently," said Bernard C. Parks Jr., chief of staff for Councilman Bernard C. Parks, the former Los Angeles Police Department chief. "He had the hit-and-run and now this. It all finally caught up with him, and it is going to cost him four years of his life."
Ali, born Ronald Todd Eskew, spent two years in prison for armed robbery before coming to prominence in 1998 when he led public protests over the case of Sherrice Iverson, a 7-year-old girl from South Central Los Angeles who was sexually attacked and strangled in a Nevada casino bathroom. He became an activist who transcended convention, protesting pornography in a Snoop Dogg video, urging blacks to work with police and speaking out on behalf of crime victims of every race.
