A homeless man, who robbed a Fullerton bank in March 2012 and literally got caught red handed, is scheduled to be punished today in Orange County's federal courthouse.
Fullerton police officers caught Jason Eugene Archuleta just feet away from the front door of Opus Bank, but not just because the electrician with a history of mental issues didn't have a vehicle to aid his escape.
Moments after he left the bank with the loot, a red dye pack exploded on the currency and his hand.
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The dye spoiled any possible mystery or manhunt for police detectives.
Federal probation officials have recommended a sentence of 30 months because they believe Archuleta made a death threat to the teller, but Assistant United States Attorney Jeannie M. Joseph has taken a different view.
According to Joseph, the unarmed robber–who'd been eating out of public trash cans–told the clerk, “Give me the money,” placed his hand on his hip and then said, “I have a gun.”
The veteran prosecutor contrasts those statements as less offensive than if the 48-year-old bandit had said, “Give me the money or I will kill you” or “Give me the money or I will shoot you” or had “drawn a hand across his throat in a slashing motion.”
Given the circumstances, Joseph believes a sentence of 24 months is more appropriate.
The final decision rests with U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
Update: On the afternoon of June 5, Judge Guilford sentenced the bank robber to a prison term of 24 months and ordered him to undergo supervised probation for three years upon his release back into society.
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Email: rs**********@oc******.com. Twitter: @RScottMoxley.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
I knew Jason. I think 24 months is much to lenient. This guy is not getting it. He needs sometime….slot of time to think about how he is going to manage long term sanity. 3 years at least.