CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cuyahoga County jail supervisor agreed to quit his job and never work as a police or corrections officer again after he pleaded guilty Wednesday to misusing a law enforcement database to get information about his estranged wife's boyfriend.

Steven Key, 50, was immediately sentenced to 30 days of probation and ordered to pay court costs after prosecutors agreed to drop a felony misuse of property charge to a misdemeanor in exchange for the guilty plea.

He will still be able to collect on his pension.

Key was indicted in May, three months after Euclid police and the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department first uncovered that Key, then a corporal at the county's Euclid Jail Annex, ordered a subordinate to run the boyfriend's license plate number through the LEADS database to find out his name and where he lived.

Eric Cherry, Key's lawyer, told Common Pleas Judge Janet Burnside that Key was trying to find out who his ex-wife was bringing around his children, who were living with her during the divorce.

"I would call that control, but you're welcome to call it a child arrangement thing," she said.

Key told the judge that he used "poor judgment at a time that, emotionally, I just wasn't there," and called the pain from his divorce "worse than death."

Key declined to comment to cleveland.com after the hearing.

Jail surveillance cameras recorded Key standing watch and reading off a piece of paper while the subordinate, Quincy Jimson, typed information into a computer. The video showed Key looking at the screen, writing something down, then grabbing his coat and leaving to go drive by the boyfriend's house while he was on duty and assigned to the jail.

He showed up at his wife's house that night and "aggressively confronted her boyfriend," a police report says.

Key was charged with misdemeanor menacing by stalking in Euclid Municipal Court the day of the encounter, and sheriff's investigators looked into how he got the information on the boyfriend.

The sheriff's department did not refer the case to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office to review possible felony charges until after a May 3 cleveland.com story detailing the case and Key's long disciplinary history.

Key was suspended without pay for 30 days and demoted from corporal to corrections officer in connection with the database incident, according to a copy of his May 15 disciplinary letter.

Key had been suspended 31 times in his 28-year career and received 19 written or verbal reprimands, a copy of his personnel and disciplinary files show.

He was convicted of disorderly conduct and suspended in 1995 after Euclid police pepper sprayed him during a fight while he was off-duty and out of uniform. He was also accused of groping a female inmate in 2005 but a grand jury declined to indict him. He was fired in 2007 for hand-delivering a love letter from a fellow corrections officer to an inmate in the jail, but he won his job back through arbitration.

To comment on this story, please visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments page.