In a sentencing with major implications for future prosecutions, a Hells Angel member from Temecula got out of jail Tuesday with a punishment of four years' probation for convictions on criminal threats and conducting criminal street-gxxg activity.
In agreeing to the sentence, 49-year-old James Albert Bradley gave up his right to appeal his convictions.
The waiver is significant, prosecutors say, because the gxxg-related convictions recognized the Hells Angels for the first time in a Riverside County court as a criminal street organization.
However, the convictions were in danger of being overturned on appeal because of a recent state Supreme Court ruling that held that such charges could only be applied when there are at least two gxxg members accused in a case.
Without the opportunity to appeal, however, Bradley's convictions stand.
"That was the motivating factor in this deal," Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky said after the hearing.
Although the infamous Hells Angels gxxg originated in California, members have been convicted of gxxg-related allegations in only a handful of counties. Adding a jury conviction in Riverside County to the list should make prosecutions of Hells Angels who commit crimes easier in the future, Strunsky said.
"It's a powerful tool in prosecuting other members of the street gxxg," he said.
According to Jorge Gil-Blanco, a retired police officer who served as an expert witness in the case, the Hells Angels are thriving and conducting criminal activities, not only in California and the U.S. but around the world.
He said Bradley's convictions as a member of the Hells Angels are important "in the sense that they keep claiming that they're not a gxxg. They're just a social organization. Yet, in fact, they fall under California's statutes as a criminal street gxxg."
Bradley could have been sentenced to a maximum three years and eight months in prison for his convictions on two felony counts of making criminal threats as well as a couple of misdemeanor counts for illegal firearm possession.
The charges against Bradley, a construction contractor, stem from threatening subcontractors by saying he would send Hells Angels after them if they did not pay money he said they owed him.
In agreeing to probation, Bradley is prohibited from having any contact with members of the Hells Angels and exhibiting any connection with them, such as possessing their paraphernalia or displaying their insignia, including decals on his motorcycle.
When his attorneys asked for some lenience on some of the terms, the judge, visibly annoyed by the attorneys' intermittent interjections, said the sentencing agreement would be undone if there were any alteration of the terms.
He gave Bradley 10 days to get rid of anything that demonstrates his Hells Angels connection.
Tuesday's sentencing at Southwest Justice Center in French Valley occurred against a backdrop of controversy created by the reported disappearance of Bradley's wife for several days last week, which delayed the sentencing that had been scheduled last Friday. The events led the district attorney's office to temporarily withdraw the offer of a lighter sentence and Judge Albert Wojcik ordered Bradley, whom the judge had previously let out of custody, back to jail until the situation was resolved.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jan/29/temecula-sentencing-hells-angel/