Career Criminal Guilty Again, Faces Life Term

Warren James Bland, a Los Angeles man who was labeled a career criminal last year by a San Diego federal judge, was convicted Friday of being a repeat felon in possession of a gun and, for the second time, faces being sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

If he receives that term, as he did in an earlier trial that was overturned, he will be the first person in California sentenced to life without parole under a 4-year-old federal law that targets repeat offenders.

It took a U.S. District Court jury precisely 10 minutes to convict Bland, who has spent 28 of the past 31 years in prisons or mental institutions, of possessing a gun when San Diego police arrested him in February, 1987.

His first life sentence under the 1986 Armed Career Criminal Act was handed down last year.

However, he won a new trial four months ago when a federal appeals court ruled that U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving improperly told jurors during last year’s trial that Bland was wanted in the 1986 killing of a 7-year-old Pasadena girl.

The second trial began Wednesday.

“I think it’s the appropriate verdict,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Larry A. Burns, the prosecutor in the case. “I think the sentence was appropriate the first time. Hopefully the court will reimpose the same sentence.”

Irving, who presided over the second trial too, set sentencing for Dec. 19.

The conviction Friday marked Bland’s 14th felony conviction, Burns said.

Bland’s first felony offense came in 1957, Burns said. He was most recently released from prison in 1986.