John Scarpa Jr. in Queens Court in 2013. Photo courtesy of New York Post.

A Queens-based criminal defense lawyer was sentenced Monday to two and a half years in prison for helping bribe a witness to lie and say he'd committed a murder alone, in a failed effort to try and win the lawyer's client—the accomplice—an acquittal at trial.

John Scarpa Jr. was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and a $10,000 fine based on his conviction in May for conspiring to bribe a witness to commit perjury during a double homicide trial of then-client Reginald Ross, according to a news release issued Monday by U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and news reports.

The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon in Brooklyn federal court.

Thomas Kenniff, a defense lawyer for Scarpa, 66, could not be immediately reached for comment Monday.

Scarpa has been practicing law since 1982, and he worked as a prosecutor at three district attorneys' offices in the New York metropolitan area before entering private practice in 2003, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office's news release, which also said that Scarpa will be disbarred. Newsday reported in May that Amon ordered Scarpa to stop practicing law after he was found guilty by a jury that month of conspiring to bribe a witness to lie.

It was proved during Scarpa's four-day federal trial in May that the criminal defense attorney had plotted with co-conspirator Charles Gallman, who, according to a New York Times report, was a five-time felon with a decadeslong criminal history, to bribe convicted murderer Luis Cherry to testify in support of Scarpa's client, Ross, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Despite Cherry reportedly lying on the stand and saying he had committed the accomplice murder alone, the client, Ross, was convicted in state court of that murder, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in the release. The office also said that Ross was convicted of the other, unrelated killing during his double homicide trial.

Scarpa and Gallman had promised to help Cherry with an appeal of his own murder conviction, and to spread word in the prison system that Cherry was not a government informant, in exchange for his false testimony during the Ross trial, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Gallman, 57, of Queens, was also charged and convicted in the bribery scheme, according to news reports.

"As a defense attorney and former prosecutor, Scarpa was sworn to uphold the law he so egregiously subverted," U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue said in the news release. "Scarpa went from practicing law to breaking the law and will now pay a price for his crime."

In the news release, Donoghue thanked the Queens County District Attorney's Office for its assistance during the Scarpa investigation.

Ross had been accused in 2010 of two unrelated murders. One involved a road construction worker killed at his job site because Ross was upset about traffic. The second, in which the bribery scheme took place, according to news reports, involved the brother of a man Ross thought he was targeting over a drug debt; it was the wrong man who got killed.

According to allegations made by Brooklyn federal prosecutors against Scarpa in a superseding indictment, Scarpa was ensnared in an investigation by the Queens District Attorney's Office that had already seen a separate attorney in the county, Scott Brettschneider, charged by federal prosecutors for his role in a plot to reduce a client's drug sentence by falsifying services he was receiving while incarcerated.

Gallman was an associate of both Scarpa and Brettschneider, prosecutors have alleged. And as was revealed in court documents for the Brettschneider case, he was allegedly working with a number of other unnamed attorneys to bribe and intimidate witnesses.

Prosecutors also noted Gallman's extensive criminal history, including his involvement in two separate murders, though he won an appeal in one of the cases.

In a letter filed in federal court, Eastern District prosecutors claimed that Gallman operated partially out of Scarpa's office, working to bribe and intimidate witnesses while claiming to be a paralegal or investigator.

At one point, according to the prosecutors and a New York Times report, Gallman visited Cherry at the Downstate Correctional Facility in 2015, not long after Ross' trial had begun on Long Island. Cherry was reportedly already serving a 60-year prison term for helping kill the mistaken identity target—the brother—in the drug-debt murder.

And according to the Times, Cherry had told detectives in the past that he and an accomplice had fired five total gunshots at the victims from different guns.

But after Gallman's visit with gang member Cherry, according to prosecutors' allegations and news reports, intercepted communications allegedly between Gallman and Scarpa recorded the two men discussing Cherry's willingness to provide whatever testimony Scarpa wanted him to at trial in exchange for what he wanted.

"So this guy is willing to do whatever?" Scarpa asked Gallman, according to prosecutors.

"Whatever you need, John," Gallman is said to have replied. "Whatever you need."

Despite Cherry's untruthful testimony before Ross' trial jury, Ross was still convicted of both unrelated homicides and sentenced to 74 years in prison.

Scarpa has reportedly taken other actions in court which have been controversial and caused at least one judge to admonish him.

According to a 2013 New York Post report, he argued during the sentencing of his convicted client, Rasheen Everett, that Everett's sentence should be lighter because his murder victim—a transgender prostitute—was not "someone from the higher end of the community."

"A sentence of 25 years to life is an incredibly long period of time judge," Scarpa said to the sentencing judge, according to the Post report.

He reportedly added, in speaking to the judge, "Shouldn't that be reserved for people who are guilty of killing certain classes of individuals."

The judge, Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard Buchter, reportedly admonished Scarpa while sentencing his client to 29 years in prison, saying to the attorney, "This court believes every human life in sacred. It's not easy living as a transgender, and I commend the family for supporting her."