Justin Watson

Justin Watson enters the federal courthouse in downtown Huntsville for his sentencing hearing in November 2016. (WHNT photo)

The former Madison County deputy who pleaded guilty in federal court to lying under oath about a brutal traffic stop in which he was accused of assaulting the driver reported to prison Thursday.

Justin Adam Watson, 32, began a three-year prison term at the low-security federal prison in Butner, N.C., according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre sentenced Watson in November but allowed him to remain free until after the holidays before beginning his prison term.

The prison in Butner is in north central North Carolina, about 30 miles north of Raleigh. The judge had recommended that Watson be housed at the federal prison camp at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery because of his small children and disabled mother.

At Watson's sentencing hearing, FBI agent Susan Shimpeno testified that on the night of Aug. 22, 2012, Justin Watson pulled over Robert Bryant, a handyman from Tennessee, "struck him in the face, knocked out his teeth, beat him with a baton and choked him until he was unconscious."

Shimpeno said the stop and beating were revenge for a bar fight weeks earlier.

In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Watson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice (misleading conduct) in exchange for four other charges being dropped.

During that November hearing, Watson acknowledged enacting a traffic stop on Bryant, then striking and choking him. But Watson maintained he was acting in self-defense.

Watson lied while on the witness stand during a preliminary hearing for Bryant in December 2012. Bryant had been charged with felony assault of a law enforcement officer, but the charge was later dropped.

During that preliminary hearing, Watson testified that he had never met Bryant before the traffic stop and that he had not gotten into a bar fight with him at Billy's, a night spot in north Madison County.