The former Mills High School teacher who secretly taped girls using the bathroom and installed a peephole camera in his desk to look up students’ skirts was sentenced yesterday to two years prison.

David Joseph Lista, 36, sobbed audibly as he was cuffed and led from the courtroom after a two-hour sentencing hearing in which he repeatedly apologized for his actions and Judge Stephen Hall said his two-decade addiction to multiple substances was not an excuse for his actions.

“Quite frankly, I’m not buying that,” Hall said before imposing three sentences to run concurrently — two years for drug use and possession, 16 months for possession of child pornography and 60 days for misdemeanor counts of improper peeping.

Hall declined a request to let Lista postpone his sentence until after his pregnant fiancee gives birth Jan. 9. He’s been free from custody since posting bail in April.

Lista must also register as both a sex and narcotics offender and repay the school district more than $6,000 for the extra work time spent meeting with parents and teachers and renovating both the bathroom and his classroom.

Lista installed a pinhole camera in the ceiling above the stalls in the girls bathroom adjacent to his classroom. Authorities found a file containing images of female students using the school’s bathroom on a school computer system after a technician tried determining why it ran slowly.

While serving a search warrant on Lista March 7, officials found drug paraphernalia at his home. Forensic experts later discovered more than a thousand sexually explicit videos and still photographs, some of children and some labeled with the girls’ names and favored body parts, according to prosecutor Elaine Tipton.

Investigators also discovered a pinhole camera installed in Lista’s school room desk, apparently to film students under their desks, and turned up footage of him first setting up the camera.

 While the peeping charges stemming from the bathroom videotaping carried the least incarceration, those were incidents on which the attorneys and San Mateo Union High School District Superintendent David Miller focused. Miller said the emotional damage from discovering the hidden bathroom cameras is ongoing, as at least one teenage girl on the tape has transferred, others underwent therapy and the facility remains underutilized. Those on campus make dark jokes about the bathroom and the assistant principal who had to identify the girls from the footage still has nightmares, Miller said.

Most heartbreaking, he said, was seeing the girls on the tape enter the bathroom on Valentine’s Day with flowers from their boyfriends, setting them down while they attended to their needs.

“They knew they were safe ... or, they thought they were safe,” Miller said.

Lista, an English teacher, was beloved by students, both Tipton and defense attorney Elizabeth Grossman agreed. When Lista disappeared for a week before his arrest — a week Tipton said was spent smoking methamphetamine and watching pornography — students accused the administration of wrongdoing.

His previous accolades as an educator and well-liked reputation makes his betrayal even more egregious, Hall said.

In court, Lista offered a lengthy apology to the students, parents, Miller and other faculty, asking that his situation serve as a lesson of how substance abuse and bad judgment can destroy lives.

“I totally accept that I’m horrible,” Lista said, conceding he “stooped to the level of despicability.”

His arrest brought him “deep humiliation” and an inability to hold a job once employers learn of the conviction, he said.

Lista began substance abuse rehabilitation and counseling since his arrest, Grossman said.

Tipton, though, pointed out a month after Lista’s arrest, he was again charged with drug possession after a routine traffic stop turned up methamphetamine. If a 2005 DUI conviction was a wake-up call as he claimed, Tipton said, Lista wasn’t showing it by being arrested twice in 2008 while on probation.

Lista’s negotiated plea in August left him facing no more than two years in prison on the two felonies and two misdemeanors. The lack of a trial also left all but the sparsest of details about his crimes from public view.

Taken together, Tipton argued Lista’s actions expand beyond the two-month period charged and were the basis for the maximum sentence.

A week before Lista’s arrest, a custodian reportedly saw grainy images of students on his school computer one night but upon returning to the classroom with a supervisor found the video turned off, Tipton said.

Another instance, the principal found Lista masturbating on his classroom floor but the teacher claimed to be changing his pants, she said.

When the peephole camera was discovered in Lista’s desk, investigators also found a sex toy in a drawer which he later denied owning, he said.

Lista has a habit of lying to investigators, from denying filming the girls to later admitting the taping because he was an aspiring photographer but saying he didn’t look at the footage, Tipton said.

Lista said he accepts full responsibility for his actions and lives with the shame and regret.

“I’ll live with this every day,” he said.

Michelle Durand can be reached by e-mail: michelle@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 102.