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Robert Pickett

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A federal judge sentenced an ex-Internal Revenue Service auditor to three years in prison Tuesday for a shooting incident outside of the White House earlier this year, an official in the judge's chambers confirmed.

The judge recommended that the man serve his term in a federal prison hospital.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy accepted the terms of a plea agreement made last month in the case of Robert W. Pickett, 48, an Indiana man with a history of mental illness, the official said.

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Under the agreement, Pickett pleaded guilty to one count of violating a local weapons law and agreed to an Alford plea on the charge of assaulting a federal officer. In an Alford plea, a defendant does not admit guilt, but acknowledges that the government has sufficient evidence to convince a jury of guilt.

Prosecutors had agreed to drop a charge that Pickett discharged a firearm during a crime of violence. That charge carried a mandatory 10-year sentence, to be served consecutively with any other sentence.

Pickett had been charged in a three-count indictment with brandishing a firearm at authorities February 7 as they responded to reports of a man with a gun outside the White House's south lawn fence. A member of the Secret Service's Emergency Response Team shot Pickett in the right knee when, authorities said, he refused to drop his .38-caliber handgun. Pickett was hospitalized after the incident.

Kennedy ordered that Pickett be allowed to serve the sentence at a Bureau of Prisons hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. The judge also ordered three years' probation after the sentence and continued treatment for Pickett during that period.