A former matrimonial court judge from Brooklyn was sentenced to between three and 10 years in jail yesterday for accepting bribes of cigars and cash from a lawyer.

The arrest in 2003 of the judge, Gerald Garson, touched off an investigation into corruption on the Brooklyn bench focusing on allegations that judgeships could be purchased from the borough’s Democratic Party leaders. Garson made such a claim to prosecutors after being confronted with video evidence showing him accepting bribes in his robing room, officials at the office of the Brooklyn district attorney have said.

But at a news conference yesterday, the borough’s district attorney, Charles Hynes, said Garson “never gave us a scintilla of evidence to support that.”

Mr. Hynes said little about the status of his investigation into judicial corruption, now in its fifth year. “It’s difficult to tell where it’s going to lead,” he said.

The allegations against Garson, many lawyers say, lowered public confidence in the Brooklyn judiciary. In sentencing Garson, Judge Jeffrey Berry told him: “You’ve got my empathy, but so does the rest of the judiciary in the state of New York.”

Judge Berry castigated Garson for not living up to the ethical code of the profession. A judge, Judge Berry said, must be “as pure as the driven snow.”

Garson, 75, was not accused of fixing any case but with helping to craft legal strategies for a lawyer who appeared before him. The lawyer, Paul Siminovsky, took Garson out to restaurants and gave him cash and cigars.

Choking with emotion, Garson said that when he saw video evidence of himself accepting the gifts, he felt “appalled, embarrassed, and ashamed at my demeanor.”

But while his behavior may have been undignified, he said litigants before him were never denied the law. “I have never decided a case other than on the law and the facts,” he said.

Although he was led from the courtroom in handcuffs, Garson was released later in the day while an appellate court decides whether he should remain free pending an appeal.

Also yesterday, another public official convicted by Mr. Hynes’s office, Clarence Norman Jr., began serving a three- to nine-year prison term. Prosecutors had sought to learn whether the former 12-term assemblyman and Democratic boss ever received payment for helping a judicial candidate receive a spot on the bench, an allegation Norman has denied.

At a trial earlier this year, Norman was convicted of extortion after prosecutors showed that he conditioned his party’s endorsement of a judicial candidate on her agreement to spend campaign money with political consultants of his choosing.