HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- A federal judge today sentenced a former sheriff's deputy in north Alabama to three years in prison for lying under oath about a brutal traffic stop four years ago.

FBI agent Susan Shimpeno testified that on the night of Aug. 22, 2012, Justin Watson pulled over Robert Byrant, 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 barfight weeks earlier.

U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre said the prison sentence serves as "general deterrence" to police who would consider lying before a judge.

Watson, once a sheriff's deputy in Madison County, stared down at the table, head resting on clasped hands. He had already pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in January. In exchange, the federal government dropped four other counts related to the traffic stop, civil rights abuses and witness intimidation.

"You are a better man than your conduct in 2012 reflects," she told Watson. "You understand that."

"Yes ma'am," he said, as his wife and mother wept behind him. Bowdre also said the prison sentence is to be followed by three years of probation.

Justin Watson leaving the federal courthouse in Huntsville on Jan. 20 (Photo by WHNT - News 19)

While much of the day-long sentencing hearing focused on how Watson had turned his life around since then, the facts were too grave to pass unpunished, said Bowdre. In particular, both Bowdre and the prosecutors placed special emphasis on the weeks before the stop, as Watson pressured other sheriff's department employees to help him track down Bryant.

"I believe Mr. Watson was, for some reason, obsessed with getting even with Mr. Bryant," said Judge Bowdre.

The bizarre saga began with a barfight in late June or early July of 2012 at Billy's, a late night spot in a strip mall north of Huntsville.

In some accounts, Bryant made a comment about Watson's fiancee, in other accounts Bryant said something to someone else and Watson misunderstood. Watson was off duty and all parties had been drinking. The scuffle was brief. The barowner broke it up and threw everyone out. But Watson was left with a fat lip.

The government contends Watson couldn't let it go, that he pressured a dispatcher to help track down Bryant's identity. "Once he knew the man's identity, Defendant Watson hunted him down," reads the federal memo urging the judge to go beyond the sentencing guidelines.

And when he finally found Bryant, as the FBI agent repeated several times today, Watson texted his friend Deputy Jake Church to meet up because he "might get into something soon."

Robert Bryant at the courthouse on Nov. 17, 2016. (cstephens@al.com)

Watson then pulled over Bryant, checked his drivers license to make sure he had the right man, asked Bryant to get out of the truck and then, according to government filings, said "remember me (expletive)?" and punched Bryant in the mouth. He beat and choked Bryant to the point other deputies thought Bryant was dead.

"Had the other deputies not arrived when they did, Robert Bryant might not be alive today," reads the federal sentencing memo.

In his guilty plea, Watson acknowledged stopping, striking and choking Bryant. However, he claimed he acted in self defense.

Judge Bowdre said that the events during the traffic stop were uncertain, that no one may ever know exactly what happened at the dark roadside near the Tennessee state line. But she said Watson made the situation worse by lying about it.

Bryant was charged with a felony for assaulting an officer during that traffic stop. During a preliminary hearing in Madison County in December of 2012, Watson testified that he had never met Bryant before the stop, that he had not gotten into a fight with him at Billy's.

"The biggest mistake of my life, I lied under oath," Watson told the judge today. He said it was his first court hearing, that the questions were confusing, but he admitted he was not 100 percent truthful while under oath.

Before sentencing, Watson apologized to his father, a former Madison County sheriff's deputy, to his wife, to his mother and to others. "Dad, I hope you'll forgive me for my stupidity," he said as the courtroom packed with friends and family was filled with sobs and red eyes.

Watson also apologized to Bryant, saying that he should have walked away that night in Billy's and that he should have told the truth during the preliminary hearing months later.

But Bryant instead faced a felony charge for nearly a year. The case against Bryant was suddenly dropped on Nov. 13, 2013, just 10 days after deputies found the body of Bryant's advocate, Jason Klonowski.

Klonowski, who owned a delivery business, employed Bryant as a handyman and helped find his attorneys and pay his legal bills. But Klonowski had grown impatient. He built a stage in his large frontyard and stood there on Sept. 28, 2013, and publicly declared he would see both Watson and Deputy Jake Church imprisoned for the stop of Bryant. He named several other county officials.

A neighbor found his body on Nov. 3, 2013. Klonowski was shot three times in the back of the head, cleaned up and posed in a chair by his barn. There were no signs of struggle nor burglary.

Bryant's lawyer, Hank Sherrod, wrote an open letter in November of 2013 saying deputies had reason to harm Klonowski. The state took over the murder case. As of three years later, no suspects have been identified.

Klonowski's name did not come up at any point in connection with Watson's civil rights case, although a small gathering of protesters outside the federal courthouse in Huntsville this morning wore t-shirts with Klonowski's image. Some waved signs saying things like: "MCSO (Madison County Sheriff's Office) Brotherhood of Organized Crime."

Bryant, at the end of today's sentencing hearing, told the judge he still believes his life is in danger. He said he no longer comes to Alabama. As for Watson, Bryant told the judge: "He ruined my life, my family. I'm the one should be crying instead of them."

Throughout the hearing today, character witnesses hinted at the idea that Watson was taking the blame for widespread problems within the Madison County Sheriff's Department.

Most spoke about the trust they had in Watson, who was referred to as calm, fair, honest and thoughtful. Several said he was proactive, meaning that he was not lazy. Some testified that other deputies parked and watched movies on the night shift, but that Watson took initiative to make stops and serve arrest warrants.

"I felt safe with him," said former reserve deputy Grady Baswell, who said he heard about the barfight in 2012 but that Watson "wasn't wound up about it."

Former deputy Jeff Warden said that Watson was outgoing, trustworthy, that he never saw him lose his temper. Warden said Watson seemed to laugh off the barfight.

Former deputy Dawn Hendricks said she was saddened that Watson would never work in law enforcement again. "He's taking the fall for some of these guys he works with," she told the courtroom.

James Earnest, a family friend, was selected to speak for many who were in the courtroom. After praising Watson as honest and dutiful, he also said: "He's taken the fall in my opinion for the whole Madison County Sheriff's Department."

Protesters outside the federal courthouse in Huntsville on Nov. 17, 2016. (cstephens@al.com)

Even Watson's attorney, Michael Tewalt, pointed out there were eight deputies at that stop, that many deputies knew Watson had lied in court, yet none took any action or suffered any consequences other than Watson.

But federal agent Shimpeno, the only witness for the prosecution today, told a different story. She said that Watson initiated the barfight, that he then pressured a dispatcher to help him find Bryant's identity, and then pressured her to let him know when she spotted Bryant out at a bar.

Shimpeno said Watson also intimidated his former best friend, Deputy Jake Church, in retaliation for talking to the FBI. The judge found no evidence to support the government's charges of witness intimidation and told Shimpeno those were based entirely on Church's own statements.

But it was the act of hunting down Bryant while on duty, which was backed up by multiple witnesses and text messages and GPS data, that seemed to matter most with the judge.

For example, a few weeks before the traffic stop, the FBI said Watson made an unsuccessful attempt to stop Bryant. Shimpeno said that the dispatcher, Amanda Billings, had texted Watson to let him know "his boy" was at Billy's on Aug. 4, 2012. Shimpeno said Watson then drove past Billy's five times in his patrol car, and eventually found a matching white pickup with Tennessee tags.

That driver told the FBI much later that Watson pulled behind him, then drove alongside the pickup to look inside the cab, then drifted back and pulled him over for a busted license plate light. Only the one of the lights on the license plate worked. And it wasn't Bryant. Watson let him go without a ticket.

In other aspects of the case, the evidence was confusing, if not contradictory.

Perhaps the strangest part of the case is that Bryant has at all times asserted that he was stopped and beaten by Church, not by Watson. He said so in the lawsuit he filed in 2014, a suit the county paid $625,000 to settle without taking a deposition.

In an interview with al.com in June, Bryant yet again said of Watson: "He lied. He ain't the man who pulled me over. I know what happened. I know who hit me....I know the difference between 5'7" and 6'2"" Bryant says Watson showed up later.

But Church says Watson was the one who stopped Bryant. And Watson in his guilty plea said he was the one who stopped Bryant. The FBI also says that Church was on a call elsewhere at the time.

The government in court filings says that Bryant perhaps injured his head during the beating and wrongly fixated on Deputy Church. The prosecution argues that when Church arrived on Aug. 22, 2012, he walked over to Bryant, who was handcuffed and face down, and whispered "You (expletive) with the wrong guy, (expletive). You're gonna have to deal with this the rest of your life. Remember my face."

Watson's attorney today at several points hinted that Deputy Church may have done even more. He said that after the deputies revived Bryant at the roadside, Church then drove Bryant to the hospital, instead of sending him for medical help in an ambulance in accordance with county policy.

The attorney pointed out the photos of Bryant's battered face were taken after this unusual drive, and that the GPS records show Church stopped twice enroute to the hospital. But Bryant has never alleged Church did anything to him during the drive.

At the hospital, tests found Bryant had not been drinking before the traffic stop. He tested positive for trace amounts of marijuana.

Watson told the judge today that he's not a loose cannon, not a man with a chip on his shoulder and not a repeat offender. "I'm just a man who made a mistake."

Tewalt, his attorney, pleaded with the judge: "His life is already destroyed, we don't have to destroy it any further or anyone else's, to prove a point."

But Judge Bowdre said said Watson's poor decisions were not made in a split second, but spanned several months and warranted a custodial sentence.

The defense requested that Watson have time to prepare to report to prison. Bowdre granted Watson until Jan. 5, 2017, so he can be at home with his wife and daughters over the holidays.

"It's hard to understand why the events here occurred," said Judge Bowdre near the end of the hearing. "I'm not sure anybody does understand."