‘Soft Touch’ Bandit Gets a Break From Judge on Term

Declaring that women are “soft touches” for clever men, “particularly if sex is involved,” a federal judge Tuesday refused to use federal guidelines for sentencing a woman convicted in a string of bank robberies and instead imposed a sentence of only two years.

“The history of it is that men have exercised traditional control over the activities of women, and I’m not going to ignore that, no matter how much flak I get from women’s lib,” U.S. District Judge A. Andrew Hauk said in sentencing Dannielle Tyece Mast, 24, dubbed the “Miss America Bandit” by the FBI.

Mast, a former cheerleader and bank teller convicted of taking $13,167 from five banks while disguised in flowing wigs and sunglasses, faced a range of four to five years under mandatory federal sentencing guidelines. Judges are permitted to depart from the guidelines only under extraordinary circumstances.

Hauk, one of the most experienced judges on the Los Angeles federal bench who is widely regarded as eccentric, said the lesser sentence was warranted because Mast had fallen under the “Svengali” spell of her boyfriend, Lonnie Jackson. The Oakland man, now living in Los Angeles, has not been charged in the case.

“It’s happened all through the centuries, and nobody can convince me otherwise,” the judge said.

The prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Atty. Gregory W. Alarcon, objected to departing from the sentencing guidelines, arguing that Mast has shown no remorse for her crimes. There is “no evidence,” he said, that Jackson exercised any undue influence over Mast.

“I believe that the relationship is not so much a Svengali relationship as a gang leader and a gang member, and that happens with males and females,” the prosecutor said.

But Hauk declared: “I think it’s more of her having moved in with him (Jackson) and liking his sex, what else?”

The judge also said: “I have a hard time believing there weren’t drugs involved, arising as it did over there in Oakland, in the black surroundings. We can’t kid ourselves. . . .

‘Could Be Saved’

“It seems to me this is a girl whose life could be saved, and could still be a great asset to the community, to her race, if you will, but I don’t like to get into that,” Hauk said. “This girl has fallen under the malevolent influence of this bird Jackson, who’s a crook of the first water in my book. I don’t know why he hasn’t been convicted of something.”

Authorities said no charges are pending against Jackson in the present case, but several women with whom Jackson was involved are under investigation for bank robbery. Jackson himself has at least 10 adult felony convictions, according to defense documents filed with the court.

Jackson’s name surfaced primarily through a memorandum filed by Mast’s lawyer, David E. Wood, which alleged that the woman had launched into a sexual relationship with Jackson and became entranced with his high-priced, fast-paced life style: “The kind of life style that an impressionable young female coming from a rural background might find enticing--especially if already hooked via cocaine and sex.”

Despite Mast’s own earlier protestations of her innocence, her lawyer wrote, “This young defendant succumbed to the Charles Manson syndrome--attachment to a sophisticated hustler who uses cocaine, sex and a ‘fast-lane’ life style to subdue a vulnerable young lady”

Mast, a cosmetologist who was fired from her job as a bank teller in Berkeley after it was robbed twice, stood weeping in front of the judge through most of the hearing, while family members wiped away tears in the spectator rows.

In a four-day trial in Los Angeles federal court, prosecutors said she left behind her small-town life in Oregon as a varsity cheerleader and basketball player, met Jackson in Oakland and launched into a spree of robberies.

Dubbed the “Miss America Bandit” because of her good looks and flowing wigs, Mast robbed the banks by displaying to tellers what authorities said later may have been a toy gun.

“Give me the money or I’ll blow your head off,” she told one teller at a Los Angeles branch of Security Pacific National Bank, according to police.

She was arrested on Sept. 22 after a police detective spotted her leaving the home she shared with Jackson’s mother and recognized her from law enforcement photos.

Hauk, acknowledging that he would likely be criticized for his remarks, said: “I think it is a fact of life that men exercise Svengali influence over--I can’t even remember who it is.”

“Anybody read Svengali?” he inquired, referring to George du Maurier’s 1894 novel, “Trilby,” about an evil hypnotist.

“They should take into consideration the possibility that in some cases, a girl from a good background, good family, can come under the malevolent influence and guidance of a crook and a bum, and then be caught up doing things like, what’s the name of that girl? Look up Svengali, will you, in the dictionary?”

At that point, the judge’s law clerks went scurrying to his chambers for a reference book, while Hauk continued on about the “traditional control” men have exercised over women.

“Women seem to be soft touches for it, particularly if sex is involved,” the judge said. “People are going to say I’m sexist, but that’s the truth.”

Then, one of the law clerks thrust a dictionary at the judge.

“ ‘Trilby!’ ” he announced. “That’s the word. ‘Trilby!’ T-R-I-L-B-Y. I’m getting to the age where I don’t remember everything . . . She was Jackson’s Trilby as Trilby was Svengali’s Trilby.”

Hauk actually sentenced Mast to two years on each of the first four counts, but made the sentences concurrent with each other. An additional two-year sentence on the fifth count was suspended, and Hauk ordered Mast to undergo five years of probation after her release, undergo a drug treatment program and psychological counseling.

Fine Ordered

The judge also ordered her to pay $13,167 in restitution and a $1,000 fine--substantially lower than the fine that could have been imposed under the sentencing guidelines.

Alarcon refused to comment on the sentence after the hearing but did say there was never any evidence introduced at trial about any connection between Jackson and the robberies.

“It was never brought out at trial, and it was never brought out as a defense, and there was never any evidence that this person was anywhere near the bank robberies,” he said.

Hauk, a 76-year-old senior judge, has a reputation for throwing tantrums, bullying his staff and offering homilies from the bench on life and love.

Women “have a monthly problem which upsets them emotionally, and we all know that,” he once remarked while hearing a sex discrimination suit. In another case, he deplored the immigration of “faggots from Cuba.”

The atmosphere in Hauk’s courtroom is permeated with “a sense of craziness,” a woman attorney who has practiced before the volatile judge once said. She added that Hauk once asked her in open court: “Are you trying to make a federal case out of this?”