A man who chased, threatened and yelled racial slurs at a pregnant Black woman at a Fullerton bus stop was re-sentenced Friday, Aug. 29 to 27 years to life in prison, after an appellate court found that his previous five-year sentence for the hate crime driven confrontation was not harsh enough.
Tyson Theodore Mayfield — who prosecutors described as a self-proclaimed skinhead with swastika and SS lightning bolt tattoos — was sentenced as a third-striker, with Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael J. Cassidy citing his lengthy arrest record and history of violent attacks.
A shirtless Mayfield — with his white supremacist tattoos visible — yelled racial slurs at a woman who was eight months pregnant and waiting for her boyfriend at the Fullerton Transportation Center on Sept. 17, 2018. After Mayfield threatened to “drop her baby,” the woman pepper-sprayed him and ran into a nearby cafe until police arrived. The woman later told a judge that “I had to literally run for my life and the life of my unborn child.”
The racially charged confrontation followed a series of violent assaults Mayfield had carried out over the years in which he appeared to choose his victim’s based on the color of their skin and attacked without provocation. In 2005, Mayfield stabbed a man in the face in Orange and punched another man at a gas station after approaching a couple asking for change. In 2017, he pummeled a man in Fullerton after asking for a lighter.
Over the objection of prosecutors, Orange County Superior Court Judge Roger B Robbins in 2019 sentenced Mayfield to five years in prison after Mayfield pleaded guilty to making criminal threats, violating someone’s civil liberties and carrying out a hate crime. As a third-striker, Mayfield at the time would have been eligible for a 25 years to life sentence, but Judge Robbins agreed to disregard one of this previous strike convictions for purposes of sentencing. The judge noted the confrontation at the bus stop wasn’t as violent as Mayfield’s past offenses and that he didn’t use a weapon or cause injuries.
In 2020, a panel of judges on the California Court of Appeals overturned Mayfield’s five year sentence, determining that Judge Robbins had abused his discretion by not treating Mayfield as a third-striker. The appellate judges wrote that “Everything about his (Mayfield’s) crime and his record shouts for application of the Three Strikes Law.”
A jury convicted Mayfield earlier this year. On Friday, Judge Cassidy declined to disregard one his previous strikes in order to reach a lesser sentence.
“He is a violent guy and he does represent a threat in the community,” Cassidy said. “He showed that in this case by just randomly assaulting a woman at the train station… He is the type of guy that, based upon his record in the last 29 years, is within the spirit of the three strikes law.”
DA Todd Spitzer previously made in person court appearances to object to the earlier 5-year sentence, at one point telling a judge that “There is just no question he is racist.”
“There is no such thing as an accidental racist. Hate is learned. It is practiced and it is perfected by those who hate others simply for who they are and the color of their skin,” Spitzer said in a statement released after the sentencing. “The beauty of Orange County is found in our diversity and hate will never be allowed to destroy what makes us so uniquely beautiful…
“Over the last six years we have fought and fought and fought for justice in this case, and today, justice was finally served today against a man who spent decades hating others, and now he will spend decades behind bars where he belongs. Hate has no home in Orange County,” The DA added.