After the Orange County district attorney appealed a previous sentence he claimed was too light, a man with a Swastika tattoo was found guilty on Monday of berating and threatening a pregnant Black lady and endangering the life of her unborn child. He now faces a minimum of 38 years in prison.
Prosecutors say the case started almost seven years ago when a pregnant Black woman was waiting for her bus on a Fullerton bench when self-described skinhead Tyson Theodore Mayfield scolded and threatened her.
A criminal complaint claims that the 42-year-old guy from Mission Viejo clenched his fists and threatened the woman’s unborn child’s life.
The woman, identified in court filings as Jane Doe, ran away and alerted Fullerton police, but they were unable to find the man.
According to court filings, she and Mayfield soon returned to the bench, where he threatened her once more while hurling a litany of racial epithets.
Doe hid at a neighboring restaurant this time and contacted the police, who located and captured Mayfield.
A five-year sentence was first imposed for that arrest and a guilty plea on two felony counts and one misdemeanor count. Prosecutors said Mayfield will serve at least 38 years following a string of court cases and pressure from organizations, including the Orange County district attorney’s office.
According to a statement from Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer, “I hope that no one else ever has to feel the absolute blood-chilling terror that this young mother described as she had to run for her life and the life of her baby, not because of what she did but because of the color of her skin.”
The public defender’s office did not return a phone.
In September 2018, 49-year-old Mayfield was charged with one felony count of criminal threats with the intent to cause violent harm, one felony count of making a hate crime threat, and one misdemeanor count of petty theft.
According to the DA’s office, he was first given a two-year term when he entered a guilty plea in May 2019. According to the DA’s office, Judge Roger B. Robbins of Orange County Superior Court ultimately increased the sentence to five years while rescinding one of Mayfield’s prior two strikes.
California
According to testimony and court documents, the Aryan Brotherhood, a strong prison syndicate, has used the gang Public Enemy Number 1 to carry out vicious murders, kidnappings, and drug sales on Southern California streets as part of its efforts to broaden its influence.
Mayfield avoided California’s far more severe three-strikes punishment, which entails a minimum of 25 years in jail, as a result of that action.
Mayfield had prior convictions in Orange County for felony mayhem in 2008 and criminal assault with a deadly weapon in 2005. In 2017, he was also charged with and found guilty of a misdemeanor hate crime that involved assaulting a man and using a racist slur.
The Orange County Human Relations Commission and the NAACP supported Doe, while Spitzer disagreed with Robbins, claiming that the five-year sentence was too light.
In a 2019 court case, Spitzer accused Mayfield of randomly selecting out people on the street based on their appearance and using violence against them. Will society be shielded from someone so heinous by a five-year sentence?
California
In what investigators are calling a hate crime, authorities are searching for a man who beat on the door of a house in Agoura Hills that was flying a Palestinian flag and shouted racially offensive remarks.
Later that year, Spitzer filed an appeal with California’s 4th District Court of Appeals, alleging that Robbins had misused his judicial power by dismissing a strike.
According to the appeals court, which concurred with Spitzer, Robbins’ behavior startled them.
According to Kimberly Edds, the district attorney’s director of public affairs, the defense claimed that their client was not mentally sound, which resulted in the case being postponed and returned to trial court.
After a trial, Mayfield was found guilty on Monday and is scheduled to return to court on August 29 to face a minimum sentence of 38 years in prison.
Fortunately, the jury did not disregard the evidence and found Tyson Mayfield guilty of exactly what he did: threaten a pregnant Black woman because he is racist, according to Spitzer, even if Judge Robbins disregarded the young woman’s calls for justice. Hatred will never prevail.
