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Paul Bergrin is shown in this file photo. Today, Bergrin will cross-examine a former employee who delivered damaging testimony against him Thursday.

(Sarah Rice/For The Star-Ledger)

NEWARK — To the last, Paul Bergrin fought. Even when it was clear to a courtroom that in a few moments, a federal judge would order the 57-year-old former Newark-based trial lawyer locked behind bars for "the remainder of his natural life."

"I come before you and hold my head high. I’m ashamed. I’m embarrassed. I’m humiliated. But I am not broken," the barrel-chested Bergrin, standing in beige prison scrubs, a heavy metal chain wrapped around his back, bellowed at U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh yesterday in a Newark courtroom.

He was facing three mandatory life sentences, the possibility of three other life sentences and potentially decades more in prison. In March, Bergrin, once a prominent defense lawyer to rap stars, drug lords and U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison, had been convicted by a jury of running a Mafia-like racketeering enterprise from his law office — one that included plotting the murders of witnesses in cases he handled and orchestrating the shooting death of an FBI informant and witness named Kemo Deshawn McCray.

"I’ll go to my grave saying I had nothing to do with the death of Deshawn McCray," Bergrin boomed at the judge yesterday.

Paul Bergrin in a photo provided by the Essex County jail.

But within minutes, Cavanaugh — who at one point interrupted Bergrin during a free-wheeling, 40-minute speech — took over the courtroom. He handed down six life sentences in all — on counts that included conspiracy to murder a federal witness, aiding the murder of the witness, racketeering conspiracy and drug conspiracy, among others. And the judge hit Bergrin with more than 200 years of prison time on other counts as well. Bergrin, who decades ago worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, will spend the rest of his life in prison because there is no parole in the federal justice system.

He has "abused his position of trust," Cavanaugh said, as he pointed out that Bergrin had used his law office and credentials as a front for crimes that went on for years. In total, the judge said, Bergrin’s transgressions are "among the most serious this court has seen … made even more reprehensible by his position as a lawyer."

He added that to give Bergrin a lesser punishment would "undermine the credibility of the entire criminal justice system," which Bergrin had "manipulated and abused for profit and power."

"I take no pleasure in imposing sentence in this matter," Cavanaugh then added, more quietly. "This is a defendant who somehow lost this way — and went from a successful attorney and family man" onto a "path of destruction."

As Cavanaugh spoke before a crowded courtroom, Bergrin, an ex-Army major and one-time amateur boxer, stood behind the defense table in silence. Nearly straight-backed, his jaw clenched, Bergrin simply fixed his eyes on a wall straight ahead and listened. Then he sat back down, his mouth still shut.

Bergrin’s trial this winter — at which he represented himself — lasted eight weeks. After just two days of deliberations, the jury convicted Bergrin of all 23 counts against him, including the murder of a federal witness, witness tampering, promoting prostitution and trafficking in cocaine.

In the two weightiest counts — on which Bergrin had been tried once before, ending in a hung jury — Bergrin was accused of orchestrating the slaying of McCray. McCray was shot in the back of the head in 2004 on a Newark street. The gunman, Anthony Young, testified at trial that several months before McCray was killed, Bergrin told members of his client’s gang that their fellow gangster would possibly spend the rest of his life in prison on narcotics charges.

Then, said Young, Bergrin told them, "No Kemo, no case."

At yesterday’s hearing, Lawrence Lustberg, Bergrin’s supporting counsel, argued time and again for exceptions to — or "departures from" — the long prison sentences most had expected. But in almost every instance, the judge rejected the requests.

After the hearing, Lustberg vowed that Bergrin would appeal on multiple grounds.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said later that "I take no pleasure in his (the judge’s) resolution — but it’s the right resolution, given what happened."

During his speech, Bergrin bitterly recalled his days as a prosecutor alongside Fishman. Bergrin said that in 1991 he angered Fishman and others in the office by testifying for the defense in a federal case, and that those colleagues have been after him ever since. He also said that his defense of a soldier accused of abuses at Abu Ghraib led him to believe that the abuses had been ordered by the highest levels of government. And, because officials worried he could prove it, they set him up.

Fishman called Bergrin’s claims spurious and baseless.

At one point during the hearing, Bergrin rose to his feet and told the judge, "I stand before you as humble as a human being can be. I have been brought as low as a person can possibly be brought."

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