SANTA ANA (CNS) - The Orange County District Attorney's office this morning criticized a judge's decision to sentence a convicted felon with seven previous strikes to a short prison term for a violent attack on a man that left the victim with severe brain damage.
Judge Roger B. Robbins sentenced Christian Isadore Dubose Thursday to three years in state prison for the April 2018 attack outside a birthday party in La Habra.
Dubose had accused the victim of owing him money, then sucker-punched him, causing the victim to fall and hit his head, knocking the victim unconscious. Dubose ran from the scene after the attack, the OCDA's office said.
The victim was hospitalized for 2 1/2 months and was treated for several skull and facial fractures, severe brain bleeds and traumatic brain injury. He suffers from permanent cognitive defects, including memory loss and difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy, the DA's office said.
In March, Dubose pleaded guilty to a felony count of battery with serious bodily injury and a misdemeanor count of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury.
At Dubose's sentencing hearing, Robbins dismissed the enhancement of great bodily injury on the assault charge and reduced the felony assault charge to a misdemeanor and did not consider Dubose's seven prior strikes over the objections of the District Attorney's office. Dubose had faced a maximum of 25 years to life plus eight years.
“I feel like it's unjust, it's unfair,” the victim's father Phillip Coley, said of the sentence. “This is an ex-felon whose behavior has not changed. He is a clear and evident threat to society (and) should be sentence as such.”
Dubose has a lengthy criminal record including the gang-related takeover robbery of a business in 2007 that victimized seven people, including one victim who was pistol-whipped and another who was held at knife-point, the DA's office said.
“It is unconscionable that someone who intentionally unleashed this level of violence after a lifetime of committing crime would be given such a lenient sentence,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. “This slap on the wrist does little to hold the perpetrator accountable or protect our community from someone who has demonstrated an increasingly serious level of violence.”
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