A 49-year-old convict whose five-year prison plea deal sentence was overturned on appeal has been convicted of a racially motivated threats against a pregnant Black woman in Fullerton and now faces a life sentence, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Tyson Theodore Mayfield was convicted Monday of a felony count of criminal threats with a sentencing enhancement for a hate crime and a misdemeanor count of petty theft.
Mayfield accepted a plea deal from an Orange County Superior Court judge in May 2019 and was sentenced to five years in prison. In June 2020, an appellate court panel overturned the deal, saying Judge Roger Robbins erred in striking Mayfield’s 2005 conviction for assault with a deadly weapon when he was being sentenced on the September 2018 case, under which he could have faced up to 38 years and four months to life in prison.
“The district attorney contends the dismissal constitutes an abuse of discretion and we agree. Completely. Everything about respondent’s crime and his record shouts for the application of the Three Strikes law,” now-retired Justice William W. Bedsworth wrote on behalf of the panel in its 17-page ruling.
“There is nothing about his criminal history or personal character that suggests he somehow falls outside the spirit of the Three Strikes law.”
The panel noted that Mayfield has “an extensive criminal record that includes multiple acts of violence against racial minorities” and that he was charged in the current case with threatening to make a pregnant Black woman “drop” her unborn baby while she was waiting at the bus station in September 2018.
“The members of this panel have enjoyed long careers in the practice of law. We’ve seen enough to make it difficult to shock us. But not, as it turns out, impossible,” Bedsworth wrote, noting that Mayfield was facing a mandatory 25-year-to-life prison sentence as a third-striker.
The woman, who was eight months pregnant, was waiting for her boyfriend when she overheard Mayfield telling two other men that he hates Blacks and that he “gets his kicks” by hurting pregnant Black women, according to the ruling.
Mayfield subsequently yelled racial epithets at the woman and told her, “I’m going to make sure you drop your baby,” prompting the frightened woman to defend herself with pepper spray, according to the ruling.
Mayfield then grabbed the woman’s backpack, left the scene momentarily and then came running back toward her with his fists balled up before she ran from the bus station, the justices noted.
The woman — who told the judge that she had to “run for (her) life” — went into a nearby cafe and called police, who arrested him soon afterward.
Mayfield was convicted of a hate crime Oct. 19, 2017, prosecutors said. On Sept. 4, 2017, Mayfield asked the victim to borrow a lighter and when he didn’t have one he called him a racial slur and punched him multiple times, prosecutors said.
Mayfield also was sentenced to nine years in prison for a conviction in 2005 for mayhem in which he made racist slurs while attacking a victim, prosecutors said.
Mayfield, who is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 29, faces 38 years to life in prison, according to prosecutors.