Robert Grajeda Canchola Jr. paid for the prison-cell killing of his brother's murderer Friday with a sentence that will keep him in prison for 45 years to the rest of his life.

Canchola testified he didn't know that Julian Joseph Barajas Jr. shot and killed his brother outside a party in the Los Angeles suburb of Montebello 18 years ago. The sentencing judge called the assertion "remarkable" for its "creativity and lack of attachment to the truth."

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael A. Savage also said Canchola was "shameless" in telling jurors he killed Barajas because the victim tried to kill him first once they were in the cell together.

"Only in the theater and the parallel universe we call a jury trial can a person brazenly swear to such outlandish falsehoods and not simultaneously wink at the jurors," Savage said. "I'd call the defendant's entire tale a whopper, but that would be an insult to whoppers."

Savage sentenced Canchola to 15-to-life for his Sept. 16 second-degree murder conviction. He tacked on another 25-to-life under the state's three-strikes sentencing law and five more for another prior on Canchola's record.

The judge said the jury gave Canchola "an unwarranted break" by finding him only guilty of second-degree murder for the Sept. 20, 2004, killing of Barajas. The murder was "truly and obviously … planned, premeditated and deliberate," Savage said.

Canchola, 39, had been serving time for robbery and an assault on a prison officer when he wound up at California State Prison, Sacramento. The same time he was there, Barajas, who had been convicted in the 1993 murder of Antonio Canchola, 19, the defendant's brother, was transferred to the Folsom prison.

Prison authorities testified that Canchola then manipulated prison officials to get into the same cell as Barajas.

In sentencing Canchola, the judge also took a poke at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for allowing the two prisoners to be housed in the same cell.

"That the Department of Corrections would allow Mr. Barajas placed at the same prison, let alone to be housed in the same cell with (Canchola), is, at a minimum, outrageously negligent and perhaps much worse," Savage said. "The individuals who allowed this to happen are clearly culpable because they set the table for a murder."

Corrections officials maintained that it was a coincidence that Canchola and Barajas wound up in the same prison.

Canchola, they said, worked the political structure of the inmate world on his own to gain access to Barajas. No prison employees were ever disciplined in the case.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Call The Bee's Andy Furillo, (916) 321-1141. Follow him on Twitter @andyfurillo.

• Read more articles by Andy Furillo