San Jose
– Victoria Jefferson learned Friday she will spend five years in
state prison for her role as the getaway car driver and lookout in
a gang-related jewelry heist at Gilroy’s Zales outlet in
January.
Meanwhile, on another floor in San Jose’s Superior Court
building, a different judge gave Benny Harris, one of Jefferson’s
fellow burglars, a six-year prison sentenc
San Jose – Victoria Jefferson learned Friday she will spend five years in state prison for her role as the getaway car driver and lookout in a gang-related jewelry heist at Gilroy’s Zales outlet in January.
Meanwhile, on another floor in San Jose’s Superior Court building, a different judge gave Benny Harris, one of Jefferson’s fellow burglars, a six-year prison sentence.
While the two Los Angeles’ residents’ prison terms are only a year apart in length, the same probation officer had recommended very different sentences: 16 months for Jefferson and eight years for Harris.
Naturally, those probation reports respectively thrilled and dismayed Jefferson’s and Harris’ court-appointed private defense lawyers. Deputy District Attorney Tom Farris had to join each defense lawyer and judge in private meetings in the judges’ chambers Friday before compromises were reached.
Judge Robert Ambrose rejected the probation officer’s recommendation for the 28-year-old Jefferson, calling the heist a “very sophisticated crime.” Even so, he said, Jefferson’s 100-mph, 40-mile race to escape Gilroy police was a more serious offense than the burglary because it endangered lives, whereas the theft involved “mere property.”
A jury on July 12 found Jefferson guilty of burglary and reckless driving in the commission of a felony, each with a two-year prison enhancement because the crime benefited a criminal street gang. Jurors agreed that Jefferson and a group of Los Angeles gang members – including Harris, 40, and Willie Cross, 37 – drove in a rented car from Los Angeles to Gilroy with the intention of burglarizing Zales.
The probation officer recommended striking the gang enhancements for Jefferson, but Ambrose disagreed. Jefferson’s three co-defendants all had verifiable histories with Blood-affiliated gangs in Los Angeles, but while Jefferson lived in a gang neighborhood, there was no evidence of prior gang activity on her part.
The law, however, requires only that a person commit a crime with a gang member to be guilty of a gang-enhanced charge. A person need not know his or her fellow criminals are gangsters. Jefferson’s attorney, Paulo Raffaelli, said he thinks this law needs some rewriting.
“It’s a little overreaching,” Raffaelli said Friday. “It’s guilty by association.”
Zales office administrator Priscilla Mungia said Monday she thought Jefferson’s and Harris’ sentences are “pretty good,” but added that “They could’ve got more for what they did.”
Harris and Cross pleaded no contest in June to gang-enhanced burglary charges. Cross was also scheduled for sentencing Friday, but this was postponed until Oct. 22 at the request of the public defender’s office.
Prosecutors dropped charges against a fourth suspect, Antonio Neely, on Aug. 30, seven weeks after a jury – the same one that found Jefferson guilty – split 7-5 in favor of acquitting him.
It was 3:49am Jan. 8 when Zales’ alarm sounded; the burglars had forced open the store’s back door, smashed cases and stolen $125,000 worth of jewelry. As police arrived, Jefferson drove off in the 2004 Pontiac; Cpl. Jimmy Callahan crashed his patrol car into a tree as he tried to give chase.
Jefferson headed to Pacheco Pass Highway and kept the speedometer at 100 mph for most of the next 40 miles. She stopped once near Lovers Lane to let the men out; only Cross was captured in a four-hour manhunt that followed. Jefferson was arrested after a California Highway Patrol officer burst the car’s tires with a spike strip at the highway’s intersection with Interstate 5. The CHP found the stolen jewelry in the trunk. Neely and Harris were arrested weeks later in Los Angeles.
Ambrose said he would have given Jefferson a stiffer sentence but relented because she had served two satisfactory years in the Navy. Her third Naval year, however, was marred by disciplinary matters and resulted in a dishonorable discharge.
In addition to Jefferson’s prison term, Ambrose ordered her to pay a $2,000 restitution fine and register as a gang affiliate upon her release.
The conviction was Jefferson’s second strike; another felony could earn her 25 years to life in prison. Her criminal record has a felony in Nevada for using another’s personal identification and two misdemeanors: carrying a concealed weapon and writing a bad check, according to the probation officer’s report. She was on court probation at the time of the burglary.
It was Harris’ seventh conviction but his first strike, according to his attorney, Eben Kurtzman. Most of his prior offenses were drug-related, Kurtzman said.
