Bail Fail SF Superior Court U.S. District Court

San Francisco felon repeatedly bailed for repeated gun crime in state court receives 30-month sentence in federal court

October 10, 2024

A violent felon who threatened a woman with a gun while on bail after being found with a gun, given bail again, and then found with another gun, then bailed once more, was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment today in federal court in San Francisco.

Vincent Guy was arrested in February 2024 by SFPD officers who were searching for him in connection with an earlier gun case. They found him illegally carrying a loaded firearm.

“This is a case with two different tales,” said U.S. District Judge Edward Chen this morning at a sentencing hearing. “[There is] some of the most serious trauma I’ve seen in what Mr Guy has been through.”

“Yet we’ve got this pattern of disregard for the law and…use of a gun to threaten people, whether it’s an ex-girlfriend or somebody else, and having access to a gun so many different times, that is a real danger.”

Guy earlier pleaded guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

SFPD arrested Guy in February 2024 in possession of a California-illegal Taurus Judge gun – equipped to fire both .410 bore shotgun shells and .45 caliber ammunition.

He had earlier been bailed after a December 2023 episode in which, prosecutors say, he threatened an ex-girlfriend with a firearm. After his subsequent arrest he was then bailed, on March 5 2024, by Judge Carolyn Gold with an electronic monitoring condition.

In 2022 Guy was also arrested with a gun. SFPD officers tried to conduct a traffic stop on a silver Mazda, driven by Guy, that had run a red light. Guy ditched the car, fled on foot and was arrested nearby. In the car was a stolen handgun, more than 100 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition, body armor, ski masks and evidence of drug distribution activity.

Brought before San Francisco Superior Court he was granted pretrial release by Judge Brian Ferrall on condition that he wore an ankle monitor. At that hearing a lawyer representing then-district attorney Chesa Boudin’s office had filed a motion to detain Guy who, it was argued, was a danger to public safety and should be kept in custody.

Guy promptly failed to appear at a preliminary hearing on July 20 2022. Records show that he was then in and out of custody over the following year and a half as his case meandered inconclusively through the state justice system.

It was after his March 2024 release that federal authorities initiated a prosecution and a grand jury indicted Guy on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ordered him detained pending trial.

Prosecutors told the court about Guy extensive criminal history.

“[Guy is] a recidivist offender with a proclivity for possessing firearms and a history of committing violent crimes upon others, and presents a serious risk to public safety,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Sloan Heffron in a sentencing memorandum to the court.

Guy has a 2013 conviction for making criminal threats after an incident where he and an accomplice pointed guns at, and threatened to murder, four people as they got off a bus in San Francisco’s Fillmore district. This included an ex-girlfriend and a five year old child.

At the time Guy was on probation after a 2010 conviction for grand theft from a person after twice robbing San Franciscans of their iPhones on the street.

In 2019, again while on probation, he was convicted of assault with a firearm after repeatedly threatening to murder a rival – threats which ended with him opening fire on his victim, but missing. He received a notional state prison term of 10 years.

Prosecutors today recommended that Guy be imprisoned for 34 months.

The court was told of the horrifying milieu of violence in which Guy lived in San Francisco. In October 2023, while on bail, his mother Yolanda Rice was killed, and he was badly wounded, after his stepfather opened fire on them both.

In the attack, just after 3pm on October 26 2023, 56-year-old Ms Rice suffered shotgun wounds in the neck and in the right upper back which severed her spinal cord. Ms Rice and Guy were sitting together on a park bench beside a playground on Buchanan Street. Jackson, carrying two guns, walked up to them and opened fire. Guy was also shot and there was a suggestion from investigators that he may have been the intended target.

Richard Jackson is in custody in San Francisco awaiting his preliminary hearing on charges of murder and attempted murder. He also faces an attempted murder charge relating to another 2023 incident.

“It’s beyond dispute that Mr Guy experienced trauma and adversity in his life,” said prosecutor Heffernan, “but while some of his experiences might explain his conduct they do not excuse what he did here or make the public safer.”

“The Government’s overriding concern is public safety and specific deterrence.”

“I am going to make a real effort to change my behavior, myself and my life,” Guy told the court this morning.

“We’ve got, obviously, the serious offense of possession of the firearm,” observed U.S. District Judge Edward Chen today. “It was, as you describe it, a ‘passive possession’, it was not in the process of committing a crime…and we have a history of either violence or use of a gun in ways that threaten people.”

“And yet we have the tremendous trauma that Mr Guy has experienced since day one.”

Chen ultimately imposed a 30 month sentence – at the bottom of the guideline sentencing range of 30-37 months’ imprisonment.