By SAM DOLNICK
WHITE PLAINS — Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner who rose to national prominence, was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials.
Under the terms of a plea agreement, the prosecution and the defense recommended that Judge Stephen C. Robinson sentence Mr. Kerik to 27 to 33 months in prison. But the judge departed from the sentencing recommendations, giving Mr. Kerik a longer sentence because he said he had betrayed the public’s trust.
“I think it’s fair to say that with great power comes great responsibility and great consequences,” Judge Robinson said. “I think the damage caused by Mr. Kerik is in some ways immeasurable.”
Federal prosecutors had denounced Mr. Kerik, a former police detective who rose to the upper echelons of power, as a corrupt official who sought to trade his authority for lavish benefits. He pleaded guilty on the eve of his trial in November.
Wearing a pinstriped navy-blue suit, Mr. Kerik was thinner and clean-shaven — without the mustache he was long identified with — as he entered the courtroom in United States District Court here. He surveyed the gallery, packed with friends and supporters, embracing some, nodding to others.
When Judge Robinson offered him a chance to speak before sentencing, Mr. Kerik rose from the defense table and spoke in a low and gravelly voice.
“I make no excuses,” he said. “I take full responsibility for the grave mistakes I’ve made. Believe me when I say I have learned from this and I have become and will continue to become a better person. I know I must be punished. I only ask that you allow me to return to my wife and two little girls as soon as possible.”
As the judge delivered the sentence, Mr. Kerik sat impassively at the defense table, flanked by his lawyers. Behind him, his supporters — including Geraldo Rivera and Steven McDonald, a former New York City police officer who was paralyzed from the neck down in 1986 — sat silently.
Mr. Kerik will begin serving his sentence on May 17. Prosecutors had requested that Mr. Kerik be sent to prison immediately, but Judge Robinson allowed him to surrender later to get his affairs in order in light of the length of the sentence. Mr. Kerik has awaited sentencing under strict house arrest at his home in Franklin Lakes, N.J.
The sentence follows a fall from a rarefied perch where he wielded power with a signature mix of brash confidence and tough-guy charm.
He was a close ally of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, whom he served as a bodyguard and driver. Mr. Giuliani then tapped him for a senior position in the Correction Department, and he went on to become the agency’s commissioner. As testament to his clout, Mr. Kerik had a jail named after him in downtown Manhattan. (The name has since been changed.)
Mr. Kerik later served as police commissioner, and his performance after the 9/11 attacks turned him into a national figure, earning him the respect of President George W. Bush, who nominated him to lead the Department of Homeland Security. That bid quickly collapsed in scandal, marking the beginning of the end of Mr. Kerik’s career.
The case against Mr. Kerik centered on charges that a New Jersey construction company, the Interstate Industrial Corporation, which was suspected of ties to organized crime, had paid for renovations at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Prosecutors said company officials had hoped Mr. Kerik would help them obtain a city license.
In June 2006, Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty in State Supreme Court in the Bronx to two misdemeanors tied to the renovation of his apartment. He paid $221,000 in fines and penalties but avoided any jail time.
In the more recent federal case, Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty to two counts of tax fraud, one count of making a false statement on a loan application and five counts of making false statements to the federal government while being vetted for senior posts. Judge Robinson ordered him to pay restitution of $187,931 to the Internal Revenue Service.
Prosecutors had called for Judge Robinson to make an example out of Mr. Kerik, and to punish him for his “egotism and hubris.”
During the hearing, Judge Robinson said he admired much about Mr. Kerik, particularly his leadership in the 9/11 aftermath. But, he said, “the fact that Mr. Kerik would use that event for personal gain and aggrandizement is a dark place in the soul for me.”
Mr. Kerik’s lawyer, Michael F. Bachner, asked the judge for leniency, citing his years of public service, and the dozens of letters of support written by family members, former colleagues in the Police Department and even strangers who said they admired Mr. Kerik’s bravery.
When asked if Mr. Kerik intended to appeal the sentence, Mr. Bachner said, “No comment.”
After the sentencing, Mr. Kerik paused outside the courthouse, where he read a statement before being driven off in a black sport utility vehicle.
“I’d like to apologize to the American people for the mistakes I’ve made and for which I have just accepted responsibility,” he said. “As history is written, I can only hope that I will be judged for the 30 years of service I have given to this country and the city of New York.”
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Bernard B. Kerik served as New York City police commissioner when Rudolph W. Giuliani was the city's mayor. His reputation rose with that of his mentor after the Sept. 11 attacks, then plunged when his nomination to a cabinet position led to allegations of impropriety and eventually imprisonment on federal charges.
Mr. Kerik was sentenced to four years in prison on Feb. 18, 2010, after pleading guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials. Under the terms of a plea agreement reached in November 2009 on the eve of his trial, the prosecution and the defense recommended that Judge Stephen C. Robinson sentence Mr. Kerik to 27 to 33 months in prison. But the judge departed from the sentencing recommendations, giving Mr. Kerik a longer sentence.
The month before that plea agreement, Mr. Kerik had been sent to jail after Judge Robinson revoked his $500,000 bail and delivered a withering criticism of him from the bench, describing Mr. Kerik as a "toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance." Judge Robinson of the Federal District Court in White Plains said that Mr. Kerik had leaked sealed information from his future criminal trial as part of an attempt to generate public sympathy.
Mr. Kerik's prison sentence followed a fall from a rarefied perch where he wielded power with a signature mix of brash confidence and tough-guy charm.
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Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty to two counts of tax fraud, one count of making a false statement on a loan application — the most serious — and five separate counts of making false statements to the federal government. These last charges stemmed from statements Mr. Kerik made to the White House during the vetting process after the Bush administration nominated him to lead the Department of Homeland Security. He later withdrew his name.
The case against Mr. Kerik centered on claims that a construction company suspected of having ties to organized crime paid for much of the renovation work at Mr. Kerik's home in Riverdale, in the Bronx, in the hope that he would help the company obtain a city license. One of the tax charges is directly related to the renovation case.
In 2006, Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in state court stemming from the apartment renovation. Under an agreement that allowed him to avoid jail time and a felony conviction, he admitted accepting $165,000 in apartment renovations from a company accused of having ties to organized crime; he agreed to pay $221,000 in fines.
The arc of Mr. Kerik’s career — from high-school dropout to a leading candidate to head the Department of Homeland Security to the target of a criminal investigation — is a dramatic one.
Mr. Kerik was born in Paterson, N.J., in 1956. In his 2001 memoir, ''The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice,'' he wrote that he learned only while researching the book that his mother was a prostitute and that she had died from a severe blow to the head, and was possibly killed by her pimp.
He dropped out of high school, enlisted in the Army and served in the military police. He trained members of the Special Forces in karate, in which he holds a black belt. After about four years working as an investigator and a guard for Saudi Arabian royalty, he returned to New Jersey, where he became warden of the Passaic County Jail.
In 1985, Mr. Kerik took a $27,000 pay cut to join the New York Police Department. He served as an undercover narcotics detective, a job that honed the street savvy that is still a part of his reputation. It was during that time that he met Mr. Giuliani, who would promote him and give him other opportunities for the next decade.
Mr. Kerik served as Mr. Giuliani's chauffeur and bodyguard during the 1993 mayoral campaign, and after Mr. Giuliani took office in 2004, he named Mr. Kerik director of investigations of the Correction Department. Mr. Kerik became first deputy commissioner there in 1995.
Mr. Giuliani named him correction commissioner in late 1997, and Mr. Kerik won praise for reducing violence in the city's jail system. Mr. Giuliani chose him as his third police commissioner in 1999. After Mr. Giuliani left office, he and Mr. Kerik became partners in a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners.
President Bush first met Mr. Kerik at the site of the fallen World Trade Center towers, while Mr. Kerik was Mr. Giuliani’s police commissioner. Later, President Bush sent Mr. Kerik to Iraq for three and a half months in 2003 with a mandate to help solidify the Iraqi police. In 2005, the former mayor pushed for Mr. Kerik’s nomination as homeland security secretary. But Mr. Kerik withdrew his nomination as questions were being raised about his conduct while a law enforcement official.
Since then, Mr. Giuliani has distanced himself from a man whose loyalty he once valued, especially as questions about their relationship kept cropping up during the former mayor’s run for president.
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