It’s a Suffolk County tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions.

Former Suffolk Legislator Wayne Prospect, 58, for years an environmentally-committed, idealistic and truly independent-minded figure in Suffolk County government, was imprisoned last week for his 2006 bribery conviction. He was sentenced to 2 ½ to 7 l/2 years. Now terminally ill with cancer, he has been given less than 18 months to live.

Speaking of the jailing as “appalling” was his brother, Steven, who with the rest of the Prospect family has stood by Mr. Prospect and was with him when court officers took him into custody Friday. Steven noted he has been accompanying his brother daily to the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for treatment and “by the time he gets back to Sloan, he could be overcome.”

Mr. Prospect burst on to the Suffolk County governmental scene with his election in 1979 to the Suffolk Legislature. He had been a high school social studies teacher but wanted go beyond instructing students in government and engage in it himself.

Six months after taking office in 1980, he had concluded that government is “probably worse” than most people think. He said he found it mainly “responds to the will of various special interest groups.” In Suffolk these were “the real estate interests, the union interests, the utility interests…They run rampant…Usually their views hold sway. The only way for people to turn it around is to get involved in the process.”

He said he didn’t see himself getting “seduced by the process…I believe we should confront the world, not conform to it…I believe when you get elected you are the people’s sword and you should walk around with a baseball bat.”

And that’s what he did for a decade as a legislator.

He crusaded on a broad front including fighting to save the pine barrens, for preservation of pure water, dealing with solid waste properly, creation of a Suffolk Department of Natural Resources and against the Long Island Lighting Company’s Shoreham nuclear power plant, which LILCO intended to be the first of seven to 11 nuclear plants it would construct on Long Island.

His ally and friend, Republican Gregory Blass, became presiding officer of the Suffolk Legislature and Democrat Prospect its deputy presiding officer. Together they were the key government officials leading the battle against Shoreham.

In 1989, LILCO and Shoreham construction unions, along with development interests among them the Long Island Association, knowing they couldn’t defeat the popular duo in a general election, worked on eliminating them through party primaries in which a small fraction vote—and they succeeded.

Out of his seat on the county legislature, Mr. Prospect moved on to become deputy environmental director in Huntington Town for several years, then served as a consultant to the Long Island Regional Planning Board and got into public relations.

Later he got involved with Steven Baranello, a Suffolk Off-Track Betting official and son of Suffolk Democratic chairman Dominic Baranello, ironic because the elder Baranello was instrumental in the 1989 push to get Mr. Prospect off the legislature.

According to conversations recorded by the DA’s office, a scheme was hatched in 2004 in which an undercover detective posing as a contractor was to pay Messrs. Baranello and Prospect to get inside information on county contracts from Leslie Mitchel, a former legislative aide to Mr. Prospect and then a deputy commissioner in the Suffolk Department of Public Works. A total of $17,500 changed hands. Mr. Baranello promptly pleaded guilty after he and Mr. Prospect were arrested and agreed to testify against Mr. Prospect.

At Mr. Prospect’s trial, his lawyer, Christopher Cassar pointed to Mr. Baranello as being primarily responsible. In the end, the jury found Mr. Prospect guilty.

Mr. Baranello is to be sentenced next month. Ms. Mitchel has resigned from county government. Dominic Baranello died not long after his son’s arrest.

And a crushed and terminally ill Wayne Prospect is in jail.