Mother’s Plea Carries Weight With Judge

Granting a mother’s prayer for mercy, a federal judge Monday sentenced the son of a longtime San Diego court official to 30 years in prison for his conviction as an armed career criminal--the minimum term allowable under the law.

U. S. District Judge Howard B. Turrentine wrung his hands and hid his eyes as he levied the shortest term for a man prosecutors had wanted to put away in prison for the rest of his life.

“I have known this mother for 40 years,” the judge said, looking on as small, stoop-shouldered Helen Alvarez, 82, begged for leniency for her son, Anthony Alvarez.

“This is not easy for me,” the judge said. “I know the heartache he has been to you through these years.”

The mother, a federal and state court interpreter for four decades, reminded the judge--a Nixon appointee who has sat on the bench for 20 years--that “we’ve known each other since you were a mere child, Your Honor.”

She said her 60-year-old son has been an alcoholic for years and cannot hold a job, and that he turned to stealing only when he was drunk and needed more money to keep drinking.

“I know, Your Honor,” she said of the heartache her son has caused. “But he has his good moments, too. And I don’t like him being compared to Warren Bland and these other criminals who have raped children and murdered.”

Anthony Alvarez has spent a lifetime before the bench. In 1961, he was arrested for stealing $6.95 and a trumpet from a music store where he worked.

In the 30 years since, he has amassed convictions for robbery, burglary, grand theft and battery on a police officer. He picked up 14 felony and three misdemeanor convictions over the past three decades.

He was last released from prison in December 1988. But, four months later, he was back in jail, this time for stealing his stepfather’s semiautomatic pistol in a drunken haze and confronting the manager of a motel on Rosecrans Street.

“There’s little question in this case that Mr. Alvarez is a career offender,” Assistant U. S. Atty. Larry Burns told the judge Monday.

“If you look at his rap sheet, Mr. Alvarez has the distinction of being in prison in the last four decades--the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and now in the 1990s. There comes a time when people should be able to say that’s enough.”

Burns won a conviction last year against Alvarez under the federal government’s relatively new Armed Career Criminal Act--a statute that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison with no possibility of parole, or the minimum of 30 years.

Warren Bland, a longtime sex offender, was prosecuted in federal court here last year under the same statute and received life without parole after repeated incidents in which he had been paroled over the years, only to continue molesting children.

Burns, who also prosecuted Bland, had hoped to make Alvarez the second life-without-parole case in California, the fifth in the nation. He asked Turrentine to impose that punishment, despite a pre-sentence report that called for a 50-year sentence. And he made his request despite the urgings of Helen Alvarez for mercy for her son.

“I feel some compassion for Mrs. Alvarez,” Burns said. “This is not her first time before the courts. I know in 1979 she made the same pleas to the courts for her son.

“And it is not his mother’s fault he is here. It’s his fault.”

Anthony Alvarez did not address the judge but did, strangely, thank Burns after the prosecutor argued for the stiffer sentence of life without parole. When his mother asked Turrentine for a lighter sentence, he stared at the floor.

She said her son has been addicted to alcohol for years, and “he steals to get money to drink.” Her son’s defense attorney, Knut Johnson, argued that Alvarez was simply drunk and never intended to harm the motel manager.

But the judge did not want to hear excuses.

“It’s more than drinking,” he told the defense lawyer. “It’s a gun. It’s a wonder someone wasn’t killed over there at that motel. It was loaded, and it was there to go off. There was a shell in the chamber.”

However, despite his harsh words, Turrentine sentenced Alvarez to the minimum term possible, with the provision that he must serve 85% of the 30 years before he is eligible for parole.

That would give him a release date of about October, 2015, and make him older than his mother is now when he is next free.