A Sacramento judge expressed anger and outrage today in a written statement he read from the bench in sentencing three men to a combined total of 2,492 years to life in prison with no chance of parole for a crime spree five years ago that culminated with a robbery-murder in Land Park.
"I don't think I have adequate words to describe the level of malevolence and depravity displayed by these defendants," Superior Court Judge Michael A. Savage said before he imposed the terms of Alex Brown Jr., Terry Larell Alexander and David Jacob Carrera.
The defendants "quite literally made war" in a week-long crime rampage, Savage said form the bench. The 21 counts they were convicted on included the Jan. 3, 2006, shooting death of James Ramirez, 18, in the doorway of his parents' home on Francis Court.
"There was never a hint that any of these three men possesses an ounce of compassion, kindness, decency or for that matter humanity," Savage said.
Besides the murder, Brown, Alexander and Carrera were convicted May 3 of assorted sex crimes, robbery and assault in a home-invasion attack on drug dealers in Oak Park that took place on Dec. 27, 2005. Jurors also convicted the three of the robbery assaults and kidnappings of two friends of Ramirez whom they coerced into directing them to the slain teenager's house the morning of the murder.
Brown was convicted of fatally shooting Ramirez, a neighborhood-level marijuana dealer, in an early-morning robbery. Savage sentenced Brown, 34, to life in prison plus 544 years. Alexander, 25, got 478 years on top of his life-without-parole sentence. Carrera, 33, with two previous serious felony convictions, got hit the hardest with 1,470 years, plus life without parole, as a result of the state's three-strikes law.
It took the judge more than 20 minutes to read the sentences on the defendants for each of the 21 counts.
"After the murder of Mr. Ramirez, when Mr. Brown asked his crime partners if anybody had a problem with what he had done," Savage said, recalling the testimony about the killers' conversation after the shooting, "nobody said a word and the silence said it all -- the utterly depraved murder of Mr. Ramirez was simply this group's hideous exclamation point on their true character."
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