The criminal indictment on Wednesday of District Attorney Thomas Spota left lawyers in Suffolk County disheartened and reeling—despite the county's long history of fraud and corruption, and despite years of news reports that federal investigators had Spota and his anti-corruption assistant prosecutor, Christopher McPartland, in their sights.

“This news has really shaken the criminal justice system in Suffolk County, significantly. This news is a shock. People thought it had gone away,” said Anthony La Pinta, a 25-year criminal defense attorney based in Hauppauge, Long Island, on Wednesday.

Tad Scharfenberg, another area criminal defense lawyer, said he was not as shocked by the indictment but was nonetheless left deeply disappointed by it. “I don't think lawyers [litigating cases with Spota's office] had a negative view of him. I think most people before this really thought he played it fair.”

“But I think there were certain people he put his trust in that couldn't be trusted,” Scharfenberg continued, “and I think the office now has to be looked at from top to bottom.”

On Thursday, in the wake of the indictment, Spota announced that he was resigning from the office imminently.

“The governor will be notified of my decision today,” he said in a statement. “The chief assistant district attorney, Emily Constant, will thereafter assume my duties and responsibilities.”

Both La Pinta and Scharfenberg said separately that for hours on Wednesday, after news broke of the four-count indictments of both Spota and McPartland for witness tampering and obstructing a federal investigation, their cell and work phones filled up with text and voice messages of concern.

“Just a little bit of surprise,” Scharfenberg said of the notes from fellow lawyers he'd been receiving about the indictments.

“When something like this happens, no matter what your politics are, it's a sad day,” he also said. “A major public official was charged, and it truly impacts the public's confidence in the criminal justice system, which should never happen.”

On Wednesday, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York unsealed an indictment in Central Islip that charged both Spota and McPartland, the office's chief of investigations and chief of the government corruption bureau, with witness tampering and obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to do the same.

The charges came from a yearslong investigation that prosecutors said exposed efforts by both men to silence witnesses, including co-conspirators, who were set to describe how a former Suffolk County police chief beat and shackled a suspect detained after allegedly breaking into the chief's car.

The suspect, a heroin user named Christopher Loeb, also had been accused of stealing from the car the chief's duffel bag containing sex toys, pornographic DVDs and cigars.

By April 2013, federal authorities disclosed that they had initiated a grand jury investigation into Loeb's beating. And early on, reports indicated that Spota and McPartland were included among county law enforcement officers being scrutinized.

Spota had met the police chief, James Burke, in the 1970s, when Burke was a teenager. And after being elected and entering the DA's office in 2002, he had brought Burke, whom he considered a protégé, into the office as a key investigator, news reports say.

Last year, Burke pleaded guilty to beating Loeb and was sentenced to 46 months in prison.

On Wednesday, Spota and McPartland were accused in the indictment of having used their positions to intimidate and pressure unnamed witnesses who'd been set to finger Burke in Loeb's beating.

The six-page document said Spota and McPartland had pressured witnesses into lying to federal agents, and into giving false and incomplete testimony to grand jurors. But the indictment failed to detail how the alleged pressuring was done.

Spota, 76, entered a not guilty plea at the Central Islip federal courthouse on Wednesday. His lawyer, Covington & Burling partner Alan Vinegrad, claimed his client's innocence outside the courthouse.

McPartland's counsel, Krantz & Berman attorney Larry Krantz, also released a statement saying that his 51-year-old client was innocent.

But throughout the legal circles of Suffolk County, especially among the defense bar that has tangled across the courtroom with Spota—the county's longest-serving DA—for years, the damage seemed to have been already done. The other shoe had finally dropped.

“When the district attorney of your county and one of his chief assistants gets indicted, that's big news, not just for the lawyers but for the county itself. It becomes a sad day for the county,” Scharfenberg, who heads a boutique firm in Ronkonkoma, said.

He added that, as far as his day-to-day criminal practice, he expects his cases involving Spota's office will continue to run normally. He had no indication that his cases had been handled unfairly before.

“I can't say that my cases have been impacted,” he said.

Moreover, he noted, Spota, whose term ends in December, had already announced this year that he would not be running for a record fifth term in office.

Still, “this is something where going forward that we need a change, a clean slate for the office, with regard to a DA and the immediate people around him,” said Scharfenberg, who's been public about his support for Democratic district attorney candidate, Tim Sini, the county's police commissioner.

“It's at a point now, sadly,” he also said, “that when a DA gets indicted, that for the benefit of the office he needs to step down.”

In a statement Wednesday, Sini also made strong calls for Spota to leave office.

“Let me be clear,” he said, “DA Tom Spota, who was federally indicted today, is unfit to serve and must resign immediately. There is no other option. Any suggestion to the contrary is unacceptable.”

A still-reeling La Pinta added, “I just don't know the man [Spota] to be of this character. I truly was taken aback by this. What has been said over the past two years, I just thought it was some kind of rumor and taken out of context.”

The criminal indictment on Wednesday of District Attorney Thomas Spota left lawyers in Suffolk County disheartened and reeling—despite the county's long history of fraud and corruption, and despite years of news reports that federal investigators had Spota and his anti-corruption assistant prosecutor, Christopher McPartland, in their sights.

“This news has really shaken the criminal justice system in Suffolk County, significantly. This news is a shock. People thought it had gone away,” said Anthony La Pinta, a 25-year criminal defense attorney based in Hauppauge, Long Island, on Wednesday.

Tad Scharfenberg, another area criminal defense lawyer, said he was not as shocked by the indictment but was nonetheless left deeply disappointed by it. “I don't think lawyers [litigating cases with Spota's office] had a negative view of him. I think most people before this really thought he played it fair.”

“But I think there were certain people he put his trust in that couldn't be trusted,” Scharfenberg continued, “and I think the office now has to be looked at from top to bottom.”

On Thursday, in the wake of the indictment, Spota announced that he was resigning from the office imminently.

“The governor will be notified of my decision today,” he said in a statement. “The chief assistant district attorney, Emily Constant, will thereafter assume my duties and responsibilities.”

Both La Pinta and Scharfenberg said separately that for hours on Wednesday, after news broke of the four-count indictments of both Spota and McPartland for witness tampering and obstructing a federal investigation, their cell and work phones filled up with text and voice messages of concern.

“Just a little bit of surprise,” Scharfenberg said of the notes from fellow lawyers he'd been receiving about the indictments.

“When something like this happens, no matter what your politics are, it's a sad day,” he also said. “A major public official was charged, and it truly impacts the public's confidence in the criminal justice system, which should never happen.”

On Wednesday, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York unsealed an indictment in Central Islip that charged both Spota and McPartland, the office's chief of investigations and chief of the government corruption bureau, with witness tampering and obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to do the same.

The charges came from a yearslong investigation that prosecutors said exposed efforts by both men to silence witnesses, including co-conspirators, who were set to describe how a former Suffolk County police chief beat and shackled a suspect detained after allegedly breaking into the chief's car.

The suspect, a heroin user named Christopher Loeb, also had been accused of stealing from the car the chief's duffel bag containing sex toys, pornographic DVDs and cigars.

By April 2013, federal authorities disclosed that they had initiated a grand jury investigation into Loeb's beating. And early on, reports indicated that Spota and McPartland were included among county law enforcement officers being scrutinized.

Spota had met the police chief, James Burke, in the 1970s, when Burke was a teenager. And after being elected and entering the DA's office in 2002, he had brought Burke, whom he considered a protégé, into the office as a key investigator, news reports say.

Last year, Burke pleaded guilty to beating Loeb and was sentenced to 46 months in prison.

On Wednesday, Spota and McPartland were accused in the indictment of having used their positions to intimidate and pressure unnamed witnesses who'd been set to finger Burke in Loeb's beating.

The six-page document said Spota and McPartland had pressured witnesses into lying to federal agents, and into giving false and incomplete testimony to grand jurors. But the indictment failed to detail how the alleged pressuring was done.

Spota, 76, entered a not guilty plea at the Central Islip federal courthouse on Wednesday. His lawyer, Covington & Burling partner Alan Vinegrad, claimed his client's innocence outside the courthouse.

McPartland's counsel, Krantz & Berman attorney Larry Krantz, also released a statement saying that his 51-year-old client was innocent.

But throughout the legal circles of Suffolk County, especially among the defense bar that has tangled across the courtroom with Spota—the county's longest-serving DA—for years, the damage seemed to have been already done. The other shoe had finally dropped.

“When the district attorney of your county and one of his chief assistants gets indicted, that's big news, not just for the lawyers but for the county itself. It becomes a sad day for the county,” Scharfenberg, who heads a boutique firm in Ronkonkoma, said.

He added that, as far as his day-to-day criminal practice, he expects his cases involving Spota's office will continue to run normally. He had no indication that his cases had been handled unfairly before.

“I can't say that my cases have been impacted,” he said.

Moreover, he noted, Spota, whose term ends in December, had already announced this year that he would not be running for a record fifth term in office.

Still, “this is something where going forward that we need a change, a clean slate for the office, with regard to a DA and the immediate people around him,” said Scharfenberg, who's been public about his support for Democratic district attorney candidate, Tim Sini, the county's police commissioner.

“It's at a point now, sadly,” he also said, “that when a DA gets indicted, that for the benefit of the office he needs to step down.”

In a statement Wednesday, Sini also made strong calls for Spota to leave office.

“Let me be clear,” he said, “DA Tom Spota, who was federally indicted today, is unfit to serve and must resign immediately. There is no other option. Any suggestion to the contrary is unacceptable.”

A still-reeling La Pinta added, “I just don't know the man [Spota] to be of this character. I truly was taken aback by this. What has been said over the past two years, I just thought it was some kind of rumor and taken out of context.”