O.C. Man Is Sentenced for 50th Strike

An Orange County man prosecutors say could be California’s criminal strikeout king was sentenced Friday for his 50th strike: breaking into a Lake Forest chiropractor’s office to steal a former girlfriend’s telephone number.

Bruce Lyons, 48, who has spent nearly all his adult life behind bars, was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison by Orange County Superior Court Judge Kazuharu Makino.

“This guy was a poster boy for the three-strikes law [long] ago,” said Ebrahim Baytieh, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted Lyons.

The three-strikes law, adopted by the Legislature in 1994, prescribes a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life for anyone convicted of three or more serious crimes.

Lyons was born in Hammond, Ind., and moved to Southern California when he was 12. He began his criminal career in Orange County with a felony conviction for residential burglary in 1975. After serving 13 years in prison, Lyons was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a spate of crimes, mostly sex-related robberies in which he forced women to remove their underwear at gunpoint.

His most recent conviction, the prosecutor said, stemmed from a 2002 incident in which Lyons -- once again just released from prison -- refused to take no for an answer from a woman he had dated for a short time.

When she tried to end the relationship, Baytieh said, Lyons harassed her with phone calls and obscene messages on her answering machine, leading her to change her phone number several times. Eventually, Baytieh said, Lyons broke into the office of the woman’s employer to steal records containing her new phone number.

“When I was first assigned to the case, I had to do a double-take to make sure I wasn’t misreading his record,” Baytieh said. “The only way to describe him, other than to say he’s a career criminal, is to say he’s a career criminal who also happens to be a sexual deviant.”

Lyons’ defense attorney, Sonja Muir of Fullerton, said she had never had a client with so many strikes. “I haven’t checked,” she said, “but I don’t know if there is anybody else” in California with a record like that.

Lyons, who is in Orange County Jail, will soon be tried in Los Angeles County, where he is accused of 10 to 15 robberies.

“This guy will never be released,” Baytieh said. “He’s the kind of person who absolutely deserves to be locked up in state prison for the rest of his life.”