A judge in Twin Falls, Idaho wasn’t holding any punches back from a defendant in his courtroom who pled guilty to assaulting a man with a baseball bat.
In September, Logan John Urrizaga, 23, entered an Alford guilty plea to charges of felony aggravated battery with an enhancement with a deadly weapon.
According to court documents, on September 1, 2016, Kali J. Langer, 20, called the victim over to her house sometime between 3-4 a.m. The victim arrived at her home and walked into a hallway where Urrizaga was armed with a baseball bat. Urrizaga swung the bat forcefully at the victim’s head, striking him on the forehead.
But at Urrizaga’s sentencing hearing on June 6, 2017, Fifth District Judge Randy Stoker didn’t just hand down his fate, he served the criminal a dish of hard reality.
“I understand that you have some stability in the community, but I’m taking you out of the community. You are going into the rider program because you need to understand the inner workings of the Idaho State Penitentiary,” Stoker lectured.
Stoker handed down the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison but suspended that sentence and placed Urizzaga in the state’s retained jurisdiction program aimed at rehabilitating offenders.
The sentence will run concurrent to a November burglary charge. A third charge of aggravated battery, stemming from an incident that occurred days after Urrizaga was released from jail where he pulled out another baseball bat to use as a weapon against a person, was dismissed in a plea agreement.
“If you would have broken into my home in the middle of the night, you’d be dead. I would have shot you,” Stoker said of the burglary charge.
Think the judge’s warning may do more to deter any future late-night break-ins than any time in jail might do for this kid.
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