Hard-Times Bank Bandit Gets 6 Months

Vernon Lamarr Clark, a 51-year-old homeless and jobless man who robbed a San Diego bank of $40 to obtain the comforts of shelter and food in jail, was sentenced Wednesday to six months behind bars by a federal judge who said that being down and out does not excuse a turn to crime.

U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. said that sentencing Clark, who pleaded guilty Wednesday in a plea bargain to a charge of misdemeanor bank larceny, presented a dilemma, since the law calls not only for guilt and punishment but, when appropriate, for compassion.

It was beyond question, Thompson said, that being on the streets without a job was a daunting situation. But robbing a bank was not the way up and out, he said.

“Irrespective of one’s motives, the law has been broken, and we cannot condone that kind of criminal action, even if it is to seek shelter and food,” Thompson said.

An ironworker who lost his job when work turned slow and then his home when his wife kicked him out, Clark said he robbed a San Diego branch bank on Oct. 25 because he could think of no other way to get help. When he pulled the robbery, he had been living on the streets for about two years, scavenging through trash bins for food and scrounging for aluminum cans.

Clark freely admitted that he committed the robbery.

“I was in a state of depression,” he said Wednesday. “I needed help I could not get on the street. I wanted to be incarcerated.”

He said he did not understand how things went from good to bad.

Wearing a white jail-issue jumpsuit, blue tennis shoes and clasping his hands behind his back while he stood at a lectern in San Diego federal court, Clark told Thompson Wednesday that he recalled welding steel a couple of years ago while working on the construction of the new state prison east of San Diego when then-Gov. George Deukmejian came by for an inspection.

Deukmejian shook his hand, Clark said.

“I thought that showed that I had made it,” Clark said. Beginning to cry, he added, “And all of a sudden, I just lost it.”

Because of the downturn in the economy, the union hall has not been able to get Clark work in more than two years. Bored, he began drinking, and his wife, Mattie Clark, 37, turned him out to the streets.

On Oct. 25, Clark said, he walked in a Union Bank branch in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood, presented a note to a teller, thrust a wet paper sack across the counter and demanded $40 or $50. The note said he had a gun but he did not, Clark said. After the teller gave him $40, Clark tapped a security guard on the shoulder and told him to call police.

Originally, federal prosecutors charged Clark with bank robbery, a felony that could have led to a maximum 20-year prison term. If convicted at a trial, Clark probably would have drawn 46 to 57 months behind bars, said Assistant U.S. Atty. John B. Scherling, the prosecutor in the case.

But, because the bank lost less than $100, prosecutors decided it would be more just to pursue a lesser charge of bank larceny, Scherling said. In exchange for a guilty plea, Clark agreed to give up his right to appeal any sentence, according to court records.

The top sentence for bank larceny is one year, Scherling said. Federal sentencing guidelines called for Clark to serve up to six months, and Scherling urged Thompson to impose the maximum term.

“The government recognizes that (Clark) was unemployed and homeless at the time he committed this robbery,” Scherling said. “But that is no excuse for what he did. You can’t rob a bank and have the government take care of you for the rest of your life. You can’t rob a bank and get a job.”

Nancy Kendall, Clark’s deputy federal public defender, asked for leniency. “If any case cried out for giving (someone) a chance, and seeing what he can do with it, this is it,” she said.

Thompson conceded that the sentencing decision was complicated by the pull of different demands.

Putting Clark behind bars for a lengthy stretch would serve mostly to burden taxpayers, who would pay for his food and rent at $62 a day, the judge said. And what Clark needs most of all, the judge said, is work, not enforced idleness.

Fritz Umscheid, business manager of Clark’s union, Ironworkers Local 229 in Clairemont Mesa, offered Wednesday to get Clark back to work within weeks. Umscheid, however, could not appear in court, so Kendall relayed the offer.

“If (Clark) was able to be able to be on work furlough (from jail) by Jan. 15, I’d be able to get him some work,” since several construction jobs are due to begin about then, Umscheid said in an interview later Wednesday.

“I’m a friend and co-worker,” he said. “If I can help him out, I’m here to do it.”

In a Dec. 9 letter written to Clark that was presented to Thompson, Clark’s wife also said she stood ready to help, telling him she was ready to reconcile and live together again. Mattie Clark could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

But, in the letter, she told her husband of 16 years that their four children--ages 2 to 19--and three grandchildren missed him. And so did she.

“This thing you did only brought things to reality,” Mattie Clark, 37, said in the letter. “Not only were you seeking help for your problem, you calling out to me.

“But, being blind to your needs and being selfish, I was too near to hear you. And I (apologize) to you for that.

“You know deep within,” she said in the letter, “you’re always welcome home.”

After reading Mattie Clark’s letter and listening to the offer from the union, Thompson said that setting Vernon Lamarr Clark free immediately, after about two months in jail, had appeal, since businesses need workers and families need fathers.

But Thompson said Clark simply had to serve a significant amount of time behind bars.

“I suppose there are many people on the streets desirous of shelter, food and clothing who do not acquire those things by the commission of crimes,” Thompson said. “We can’t condone the criminal acts of persons because they are in a position where they are on the street.”

Clark will serve his sentence at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego, where he has been housed since he was arrested. Since he already has served nearly two months of his term, he will be freed in April next year.