FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – In what could be the hardest fall from grace in Broward County’s political history, Ken Jenne, the former sheriff and once the most powerful man in the county, will spend the next 10 months in federal prison.

The 60-year-old Democrat was sentenced Friday to a year and a day in prison, ending a two-year public corruption investigation. With time off for good behavior, he could be free by September. He must pay a $3,000 fine and will be on supervised release, similar to probation, for another year after he is freed.

Jenne wept at times during the three-hour sentencing hearing, apologized for his actions and said he hoped that he could one day regain some of his once-stellar reputation. He said he wished he could turn back time and make different decisions.

“In all of these apologies I feel inadequate, I feel hollow. Whatever I say will always be insufficient,” Jenne told U.S. District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas before he was sentenced.

Dimitrouleas sentenced Jenne to less time than the county’s former chief law enforcement officer expected. When Jenne pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud conspiracy and three counts of income tax evasion in September, he agreed that he could be sentenced to 18 months to two years in prison.

Because of a technicality that allows prisoners serving more than one year in prison to earn a 15 percent reduction for good conduct, Jenne will serve less time than he would have if he had been sentenced to a year.

U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, whose prosecutors asked the judge to lock up Jenne for two years, said he believed that a tougher sentence would have been more appropriate for a high-ranking public official who misused his office and breached the public trust.

“If as a community, we believe that public corruption and white collar crimes cause as much harm as violent crime, we must insist on significant terms of imprisonment for public and corporate criminals,” Acosta said. “That said, today Ken Jenne, the former Broward County Sheriff, is in jail.”

The federal investigation of Jenne began when the Broward State Attorney’s Office uncovered irregularities in Jenne’s finances while state prosecutors were investigating a false confessions scandal and the manipulation of crime statistics by the Sheriff’s Office. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to take over the investigation because State Attorney Mike Satz was once a close friend of Jenne. Federal prosecutors joined the investigation two years ago.

Shortly before he was to be indicted by the federal grand jury that spent months hearing testimony in the case, Jenne reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in early September. In court, Jenne admitted he accepted more than $151,625 in improper payments, income and other benefits from Sheriff’s Office contractors, including money funneled through his secretaries and payments on a Mercedes convertible from his former law firm, Conrad, Scherer & Jenne.

Clearly outraged by the defense’s insistence that Jenne never violated the public’s trust, prosecutor Matt Axelrod told the judge that was “just not true.”

Jenne was supposed to be an example to the deputies he led and the residents of Broward County, Axelrod argued, but he violated that trust by taking money from contractors and signing leases and other deals with them within days of taking their money and favors.

“There’s no acceptable level of public corruption,” the prosecutor said.


Jenne also betrayed the friendship and loyalty of his secretaries, Marian Yoka, 71, and Alicia Valois, 39. He had both women funnel payments to him, persuading them to hand-deliver thousands of dollars in cash to his bank account, Axelrod said.

“That’s not something the sheriff of Broward County should be doing, that’s something drug dealers do,” Axelrod said.

And while many people make financial sacrifices to work in public service Axelrod said: “That doesn’t mean they cheat on the side.”


For the 9 1/2 years that he led the Sheriff’s Office, Jenne was the jailer of 5,000 inmates per day. On Friday, when he became a prisoner himself, Jenne did not react, but stood slightly slumped.

The judge turned down his request to be allowed to surrender to prison authorities at a later date, and the U.S. Marshals took him into custody. At their request, Jenne removed his belt, his tie and his watch and gave them to his lawyer before he was taken out of the courtroom. All prisoners are handcuffed or shackled for transportation.

Jenne is expected to spend the next few weeks in the downtown Miami Federal Detention Center. The judge agreed to recommend that he serve his time in a minimum security prison in southern Miami-Dade County or Marianna, in northern Florida, but the final decision lies with prison officials. Jenne’s lawyer, Dave Bogenschutz said later on Friday that he asked prison officials not to place Jenne in protective custody because he would be in solitary confinement and would be “more comfortable” with the general population. Jenne also will not appeal his sentence, Bogenschutz said.


Jenne’s wife, Caroline, wore black and cried during most of the hearing. During a break, Jenne hugged and kissed her, then kissed his son, Evan, a Democratic state representative, on the cheek. Jenne’s daughter, Sarah, lives in Philadelphia and did not attend the sentencing.

Witnesses who asked for leniency and testified to Jenne’s character and extraordinary history of achievements in his public life included a reformed crack addict, Kelly Patrick, and former sheriff and former state Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who now heads the state Department of Children & Families. Broward Circuit Judge Ilona M. Holmes, a former federal prosecutor who is known as an unforgiving sentencing judge, asked the judge to remember Jenne’s many good acts.

They talked about Jenne’s myriad contributions that are evident in every corner of the county, how the former state senator could have gone on to higher political office, and they rued that he stayed too long in public office and diminished his personal finances when he could have earned a fortune as a private lawyer.

Now he is expected to be disbarred and may lose his state pension.


Jenne began to cry in earnest and his chin trembled uncontrollably as his son, Evan, began to make his family’s plea to the judge. Caroline Jenne sobbed harder as her tear-soaked blue tissue disintegrated in her hands.

With his voice cracking, Evan Jenne spoke of a father who he said never failed in his “unconditional love” for his family and attended every ball game that his son played.

His father, he said, wanted to protect him and didn’t want him to speak: “He didn’t want me to have to walk in front of the media, my words to be recorded.”

“All I do is I beg of you, please judge the man on the complete arc of his life, not some anomalous entry on a page or two of the journal that is his life,” Evan Jenne said.

After listening to all the pleas and legal arguments, Dimitrouleas reminisced that he was among the many Floridians who had once believed that Jenne, a former state senator, was destined to be governor one day.

But he said Jenne had let down his family, his deputies and the community when he entangled himself in public corruption.

Still, Dimitrouleas said he holds out hope that Jenne can regain some of his reputation when he is released: “I think that the book isn’t closed on Mr. Jenne.”

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(c) 2007 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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AP-NY-11-16-07 2054EST