FOR $75, Marcus Einfeld could have caught a taxi home to Woollahra from his fateful January 2006 lunch at Freshwater in Sydney's north.

His decision to drive instead has cost him his title as Queen's counsel, his Order of Australia and his reputation, and put him in jail for at least two years. Among the few things left intact is his $200,000-a-year retired judge's pension.

But as Supreme Court judge Bruce James stressed yesterday when sentencing Einfeld, it was never about the $75. Nor was it about the three demerit points Einfeld would have picked up for speeding in Mosman as he drove a friend home.

The extent of Einfeld's "deliberate premeditated perjury" and "planned criminal activity" was all the more astounding for the triviality of the initial offence.

Justice James sentenced 70-year-old Einfeld to three years in full-time custody, two years of it non-parole, for perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The fall was complete for Einfeld, a former Federal Court judge, once named on a list of Australia's "living treasures" and a former president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC).

had pleaded guilty to two offences relating to his car being clocked 10km/h over the speed limit on January 8, 2006.

For the first, lying under oath to the Local Court in August 2006 when he said he was not driving the car but had lent it to an American friend, Professor Teresa Brennan, he was sentenced to 21 months.

When acquitted of speeding in August 2006, Einfeld was contacted by a journalist, Viva Goldner, who had discovered that Professor Brennan had died three years earlier.

This gave rise to the second offence, of wilfully trying to pervert the course of justice, and it was for this that Einfeld received the heavier sentence of 33 months.

Justice James said the second crime "aggravated the seriousness" of the first.

Around August 23, 2006, when police investigated Goldner's revelations, Einfeld wrote a 20-page statement that would have done Colleen McCullough proud. It was an elaborate fiction about how he lent his car to a woman named Brennan whom he had met in Bangladesh.

He remembered little about her other than the detailed conversations he claimed to have had with her and his elderly mother on the day of the speeding fine.

His 82-paragraph description of this Brennan's appearance, the scenes and the dialogue was vivid, fluent and totally fictitious. The intelligence and imagination Einfeld brought to that statement, his history in the law and his standing in the community only made things worse for him.

Justice James enumerated Einfeld's positions: barrister since 1963, taking silk in 1977, Federal Court judge from 1986 to 2001, HREOC head from 1986 to 1990, practising barrister and occasional acting judge until his chickens came home to roost. He has been a leader of numerous committees representing Jewish people and an activist for Pacific Islanders, a UNICEF ambassador for children and an Austcare ambassador for refugees.

Past colleagues from court and HREOC days filled the courtroom, wedded to their memories of his compassion and intelligence.

But for Justice James, Einfeld's position made his crimes worse. "He knew the high importance of telling the truth," he said, and his crimes "strike at the heart of the administration of justice".

As the courtroom cleared, Einfeld was mobbed by weeping family and friends. They would be heading in opposite directions: his family eastwards, and he westwards, to jail. In his parting words, he murmured: "I have my bags packed."