Appeals court overturns short sentence in Fullerton hate crime

Appellate judges have overturned a five-year sentence for a man who angrily confronted, threatened and yelled racial slurs at a pregnant Black woman at a Fullerton bus stop – echoing concerns raised by prosecutors that the man should have received a stiffer penalty because of his violent past.

A panel of judges on the California Court of Appeals, in an opinion released this week, found that Orange County Superior Court Judge Roger B. Robbins abused his discretion by sentencing Tyson Theodore Mayfield to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to making criminal threats and violating someone’s civil liberties and admitted to a hate crime.

The written opinion notes that Mayfield has “an extensive criminal record that includes multiple acts of violence against racial minorities. (And he) threatened to make a pregnant African American woman ‘drop’ her unborn baby while she was waiting at a bus station.”

As a third-striker, Mayfield had been facing a mandatory 25-years-to-life prison sentence until the judge dismissed one of his previous strike convictions – clearing the way for a shorter stint behind bars.

“The members of this panel have enjoyed long careers in the practice of law,” the appellate judges wrote. “We’ve seen enough to make it difficult to shock us. But not, as it turns out, impossible.”

During the May 2019 sentencing hearing, the woman Mayfield is accused of terrorizing described her fear at being confronted by the shirtless, raving man who has multiple swastika and white supremacist tattoos and who she said was yelling racial slurs at her.

She told the judge that “I had to literally run for my life and the life of my unborn child.”

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer personally attended several hearings in the case and argued against the five-year sentence.

He was joined by civil rights activists, including the heads of the local chapters of the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League and the county’s human relations commission.

Court records show Mayfield has carried out a string of violent assaults in which he appeared to choose his victim’s based on the color of their skin and attacked without provocation.

In 2005, he stabbed a man in the face in Orange, the same year he punched a man at a gas station after approaching a couple asking for change. In 2017, he pummeled a man in Fullerton after asking for a lighter.

Mayfield’s attorney and Judge Robbins previously noted that the confrontation with the woman at the bus stop wasn’t as violent as Mayfield’s past offenses, that he didn’t use a weapon or cause injuries, and that he accepted responsibility for his actions at an early stage of the legal proceedings.

The appellate judges determined that wasn’t enough to earn Mayfield a lighter sentence.

“The district attorney contends the dismissal constitutes an abuse of discretion, and we agree. Completely,” the appellate judges wrote.

“Everything about (Mayfield’s) crime and his record shouts for application of the Three Strikes Law,” they wrote. “There is nothing about his criminal history or personal character that suggests he somehow falls outside the spirit of the Three Strikes law.”

The appeals court decision kicks the case back to Orange County Superior Court.

With the five-year sentence off of the table, Mayfield will have the option of withdrawing his guilty plea, potentially setting up a jury trial or a plea deal.