SAN JOSE — A man who gained infamy nearly a decade ago when he escaped a San Jose jail while awaiting his robbery trial saw his initial 49-year prison term cut by more than half Thursday, following a second successful appeal and a plea to a Santa Clara County judge to more heavily factor his dramatic personal transformation and his troubled childhood.
Laron Campbell, 35, appeared via video feed in a San Jose courtroom before Judge Daniel Nishigaya, with Campbell’s fiancée and numerous supporters present both in person and also on video. The judge initially sentenced Campbell to 49 years in prison, then in 2023 reduced it to 30 years after Campbell successfully appealed.
Campbell benefited from legislation in the intervening years, aimed at reducing the state’s prison population, that gave judges more sentencing discretion. On Thursday, during a second resentencing that was ordered by the 6th District Court of Appeal earlier this year, Nishigaya further reduced Campbell’s sentence to 18 years and 8 months.
That decrease came largely from the judge, at the urging of the appellate court, removing a firearm enhancement that added 10 years to his term. Nishigaya also suspended a 4-year term after deciding that Campbell’s conviction for unplugging and disabling a victim’s phone during a 2014 home invasion robbery was part of the main offense and not a separate crime.
While explaining his decision, Nishigaya said Campbell’s determination to reform himself “is rare, relatively unique, and speaks well for what Mr. Campbell has done for himself and for those around him subsequent to his convictions and original sentencing in these matters.”
Campbell was convicted in 2016 of committing armed home-invasion robberies in Fremont and Cupertino in 2014, and of an attempted burglary in 2016, records show. He had two prior convictions, for theft in 2008 and burglary in 2010, for which he served about three years in prison.
While awaiting trial for the 2016 cases, in November of that year, Campbell and another man broke out of their holding cells in Main Jail South in San Jose and were fugitives for about a week. Campbell was found at his sister’s home in Antioch and later pleaded no contest to the escape.
At his 2023 resentencing, Campbell described an extensive rehabilitation journey that encompassed him taking responsibility for his crimes, obtaining his high school diploma and engrossing himself in education, and becoming a model prisoner who compelled his correctional officers to vouch for him.
Campbell continued that campaign in an array of writings and declarations filed in court prior to Thursday’s hearing, including a post-release plan that detailed immediate transition support from the civil-rights group Silicon Valley De-Bug, several job prospects and a relocation to New York with his fiancée and her family, as proof that he will immediately enter a supportive environment.
“Though I am not perfect … my mission is to continue working through my past traumas, reflect on my harmful actions and belief system, and continually educate myself so that when the time does come for me to truly get a second chance at life, I will be ready mentally, physically and spiritually,” Campbell wrote in a letter filed with the court.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office opposed reducing Campbell’s sentence, arguing the court was already aware of Campbell’s rehabilitation at his 2023 resentencing, and urged Nishigaya to preserve the 30-year term and firearm enhancement. Deputy District Attorney Anne Seery also argued Campbell had not proven that his childhood trauma was substantive enough to entitle him to further reductions.
On Thursday, Seery gave her own impassioned plea to Nishigaya to consider Campbell’s victims in his decision, calling to mind their indelible memories of waking up to a man pointing a gun at their faces and threatening retribution if they called police. She also recalled how she had to tell the victims Campbell escaped from jail.
“That is public safety, that is fear,” Seery said in court. “Years have gone by, but that doesn’t make that less frightening … That doesn’t make it OK because he’s now said sorry. That fear needs to be acknowledged and punished.”
She also referenced a 2024 criminal charge in Monterey County, where Campbell was being held in prison in Soledad, after he was found with marijuana in his cell. Campbell apologized for and took responsibility for that violation, and his attorney noted that Campbell agreed to drug counseling and other measures that ended with the charge being reduced to a misdemeanor.
In its January resentencing order, the appellate court referenced state legislation in 2021 that should have mitigated the firearm enhancement, on the grounds that Campbell’s childhood trauma was a relevant background factor in his crimes, and that he was 25 years old or younger at the time.
Campbell was exactly 25 when he committed the robbery crimes, and he has extensively described bouncing around in foster care and having a fleeting relationship with his mother — who gave birth while incarcerated — and becoming destabilized after he was removed from foster parents with whom he lived for eight years, and considered his family. His Berkeley-based attorney Raphael Goldman described him as the victim of “a Dickensian failure of our social safety net.”
Goldman sought either a 14-year, 8 month sentence, which would have meant his imminent release, or a 16-year, 8 month sentence, which could have made him eligible to serve out the rest of his term out of prison under the Male Community Reentry Program, a transitional housing setup run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Nishigaya said he was “not giving either party exactly what they have asked for” in selecting the 18-year, 8 month term. But the judge agreed to recommend Campbell be entered into the CDCR’s transitional program, which requires candidates to be within 32 months of the end of their sentences. That could occur within the next year for Campbell after factoring in his time served, custody credits and other sentencing relief.
“Ultimately, the court’s decision to give Laron a reduced sentence today resulted from Laron’s own incredibly hard work and his extraordinary rehabilitation,” Goldman said after Thursday’s court hearing. “I know he will do great things when he finally gains his well-earned freedom.”