Enhancements lengthen terms, enrage critics
Two young men sat in a Martinez courtroom Tuesday, eyes cast downward as a clerk read the verdict that would shape the rest of their lives.
Azrael Vargas, 20, was found guilty on five counts and four special allegations, for carrying out a home invasion robbery with a semiautomatic pistol, among other crimes, on Nov. 3, 2019. Emarieay Prescott, 22, was found guilty of firstdegree burglary and conspiracy, with one gun enhancement. Their mothers sat in the back of the room, one quietly sobbing, the other staring straight ahead.
Vargas faces up to 31 years in state prison, according to prosecutor Christopher Sansoe, while Prescott could serve a maximum of 16 years. Initially, there were four defendants facing seven counts, but two agreed to plead guilty
to home invasion robbery and testify against their accomplices. Only Prescott and Vargas went to trial.
Their case drew attention from two city council members and multiple grassroots groups in Contra Costa County, and from parents in the Mission District, where Vargas’ mother is a wellliked public school teacher. Several people demonstrated outside the office of District Attorney Diana Becton throughout the trial, holding signs with such slogans as “Care not cuffs,” and “Atonement, not enhancements.”
For an armed robbery case, the amount of advocacy was atypical. It put Vargas and Prescott in the middle of a larger regional conversation, about how to balance the rights of crime victims against the potential of young perpetrators to change.
“The whole reason for the progressive district attorney movement was to end these enhancements,” Antioch City Council Member Tamisha TorresWalker said, referring to recent efforts to elect reformminded candidates — including Becton — to top prosecutor seats. She said Becton could have been more lenient but opted, in this case, to “use the same tools” as her predecessors to seek harsh sentences.
Becton declined to comment Tuesday, but said through a spokesman that she had never promised not to charge enhancements — a practice of using the California Penal Code to add more prison time if underlying factors are met.
It became standard for prosecutors in California to use enhancements after state lawmakers passed the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act in 1988, for tougher enforcement on accused gang members. Since then, voters and the Legislature have added enhancements for other things, including prior convictions, to the point that 80% of people in state prison have been charged with some form of enhancement, said Michael Romano, chair of California’s Committee on Revision of the Penal Code.
They are “the rule rather than the exception,” Romano said. He declined to comment on Vargas’ and Prescott’s charges.
In February, the committee published a report that recommended increasing the power of judges to strike enhancements. State Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley, is sponsoring a bill with new guidelines for judges to dismiss enhancements in cases of mental illness, nonviolent convictions, guns that aren’t loaded or when multiple enhancements are stacked up in one case — which might have benefited Vargas and Prescott.
Their charges stemmed from a chaotic night in which four friends drove to a house in Moraga where Vargas had purchased two pounds of marijuana the day before, according to charging documents. His attorney, Yolanda Huang, later argued that Vargas was shorted and had come to the house seeking the marijuana he was owed.
The four defendants broke into the home, where Vargas entered the bedroom of resident Francesca Bigotti and pointed a gun at her, prosecutors said, while someone else ziptied her hands behind her back. Vargas also was accused of opening the bedroom door of the marijuana seller, identified as Domenico Bigotti, and pointing a gun at Bigotti and his infant daughter — but the jury did not convict him of those allegations.
They did, however, convict Vargas of robbing 40 pounds of marijuana from Domenico Bigotti.
“This case is really simple,” Sansoe said in his closing argument. “It’s about four guys who planned and committed a robbery. They did this, they were caught redhanded. And there’s no excuse for it.”
He viewed the protest outside Becton’s office as a “misguided attempt to sway the jury,” and said in an interview that it was “unusual behavior during a trial of this nature.”
TorresWalker, who also runs the Safe Return Project, a nonprofit dedicated to helping formerly incarcerated people, acknowledged that some activists chose not to speak out on Vargas’ and Prescott’s case because they didn’t see it as an extraordinary illustration of injustice.
But Vargas’ mother, Ymilul Bates, urged compassion, saying her son was at a transition point. When he committed the robbery, she said, he was still grieving his best friend’s 2014 murder. He deserved a chance to start over, she added.
“My son made a mistake,” Bates told The Chronicle. “Besides that mistake, he’s been a positive community member.”
Vargas spent six weeks in jail after his arrest, until his mother pulled from her retirement and borrowed money from two friends to pay $40,000 of a $500,000 bond. Once released, Vargas enrolled in Long Beach City College, began attending therapy and regular church services, and performed volunteer work, Bates said.
On his last weekend of freedom, Vargas and several friends drove up to a cabin near Yuba City (Sutter County). Vargas said he swam in the river. His eyes danced, describing the trip as he sat outside the district attorney’s office in Martinez on Tuesday morning, waiting for the jury to finish deliberating.
At 2:30 p.m. that day, the judge revoked his bail and ordered him into custody.
Prescott, whose family could not afford bail, has been in jail for 18 months. Before the robbery, he took business classes at St. Mary’s College and worked in two sales jobs.
“This is no place for him,” Prescott’s mother, Donneisha Laury, said of the Martinez jail. Her son claimed he sat in the car during the robbery, and she hoped he would be released.
Once the verdict was read, Prescott stood up, looking weary. Laury stared from the second to last row, wearing green hospital scrubs. She works as a veterinary technician and was scheduled for a shift when the trial let out.
Prescott placed his hands behind his back as a sheriff ’s deputy handcuffed him. Vargas was still sitting, hunched over at the defense table, his expression blank. His mother had her head in her hands.