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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Teen Shapes Up, Gets No Jail Time
By Phil Parker
Journal Staff Writer
When State District Judge Michael Vigil last saw Manuel Candelaria, he told the 17-year-old, “It sounds like you're playing games. You're not impressing anybody.”
Reports coming back from a residential treatment center run by Indian Health Services had said Candelaria's time there was unproductive, his participation minimal.
But since that Oct. 19 hearing, Candelaria apparently took the judge's words to heart.
Based on improved evaluations, Vigil handed Candelaria a two-year suspended sentence and two years of juvenile probation for his role in a burglary ring that last year ransacked dozens of homes and businesses countywide.
A report from the New Sunrise treatment center detailed significant improvement in Candelaria over the last month.
“At the last hearing you told him to shape up, and he's done that,” Candelaria's lawyer, John Day, told Vigil Monday.
When it was Candelaria's turn to address the judge, he acknowledged he was given marijuana and cocaine in exchange for participating in robberies. But since that last hearing, he said, he'd seen the light.
“When I first went into treatment and stuff, I didn't want to be there,” he said. “That changed. In the last month I realized there are positive things in my life.”
Candelaria was 11 the first time he was put on probation, and Vigil sternly warned him he was running out of time as a juvenile. “In February next year you turn 18,” Vigil said. “You won't be a juvenile anymore. This is your last chance.”
Vigil also expressed his hope that Candelaria hasn't been conning anyone over the past month. “Maybe you're finally starting to grow up,” the judge said. “I hope you didn't do this just so I wouldn't send you away.”
Candelaria was also instructed by the court to get his GED, and he will have to pay his share of what's expected to be a substantial restitution to robbery victims.
Earlier in the day, another defendant in the case, Enrique Treto, also 17, was given the same sentence: two years suspended and two years probation.
Four other members of the burglary ring are scheduled to be sentenced by Vigil next month. So far only Jeremy Chavez — at 21 the oldest member of the outfit and one of its suspected leaders — has been sentenced to prison time. He was sent away for five years.
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