A white supremacist with a history of violence will spend decades in prison after California prosecutors successfully overturned what they called an unjustly lenient sentence.
Tyson Mayfield, 49, was ordered Friday to serve 27 years to life for threatening a pregnant Black woman at a bus stop in Fullerton in 2018, officials announced. The ruling followed years of legal back-and-forth after Mayfield initially secured a plea bargain that would have given him just five years behind bars.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Roger B. Robbins had offered that deal in 2019, reasoning that Mayfield had used no weapon and caused no physical injury. Prosecutors, however, immediately objected and appealed. Their challenge ultimately succeeded, leading to a retrial in which Mayfield was convicted of making criminal threats with a hate crime enhancement.
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“Over the last six years we have fought and fought and fought for justice in this case,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “Justice was finally served today against a man who spent decades hating others, and now he will spend decades behind bars where he belongs.”
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Authorities said Mayfield, who has a swastika tattoo, hurled racial slurs at the woman, then eight months pregnant, before she pepper-sprayed him and fled to safety.
The case was not his first brush with racist violence. Prosecutors noted Mayfield previously assaulted bystanders, including one man outside a grocery store whom he punched while shouting a slur.
A spokesperson for the public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Associated Press.
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