Ukiah Church Thieves Violate Probation; Now Facing Prison Time

Having admitted violating terms of his supervised probation, a local church thief and vandal — Abel Aguado, age 36, generally of Ukiah — was ordered this past Tuesday to serve 32 months in the Realignment County Prison (RCP) after his grant of probation was terminated for unsuccessful performance.

As background, defendant Aguado and his co-defendant, Devin Franklin Kester Tyler, age 27, of Ukiah, were both convicted in February 2019 of breaking into, stealing from, and vandalizing St. Mary’s of the Angels Catholic Church in Ukiah … to the tune of over $22,000.

While Assistant DA Dale P. Trigg argued at the 2019 sentencing hearing that this attack on a place of worship offended the entire community and were aggravated crimes deserving of an immediate commitment to prison, the sentencing judge disagreed and, instead, ordered both defendants to attend and complete a residential treatment program, and otherwise live a law-abiding life thereafter while being supervised on probation.

The first to fail was defendant Kester Tyler who chose to skip out on residential treatment. He was the first of the two to be found in violation of terms of probation. He was sentenced to 44 months in the RCP in May 2019, and is currently still serving time at Low Gap on that commitment.

Defendant Aguado, on the other hand, was given extra rope. He was charged with violating his probation in September 2019, but that charge was dismissed by a local judge in early October 2019.

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Defendant Aguado was then charged with violating terms of his probation in March 2020. When he admitted the violations, a local judge placed Aguado back on probation with no additional sanction save for a stern warning.

Defendant Aguado was again charged with violating the terms of his probation in July 2020. He was in fugitive status between July and September. The “end of the trail” arrived after he admitted his violations in late September.

As used herein, Realignment County Prison (or RCP), a fancy New Age name for the Low Gap jail facility, was created in October 2011 with the signing into law of Assembly Bill 109, commonly referred to as “prison realignment.”

AB 109 shifted to the counties the responsibility for monitoring, tracking, and incarcerating over 500 categories of convicted felony-level offenders who would have otherwise been bound for state prison, if so ordered by a local judge. It literally shifted the physical custody and financial cost of many prison inmates from the state to the counties.

Any inmate serving an RCP commitment is also entitled by law to a 50% reduction in the overall prison sentence that was ordered by the courts. The 50% credits towards early release are for “good time/work time” while incarcerated even when the RCP inmate is not good and has done no work.