By Michael Manekin
San Mateo County Times
REDWOOD CITY — Two convicted murderers accused of attacking a pair of sheriff’s deputies in the maximum security wing of the county jail pleaded no contest Monday to lesser felony charges in a deal with prosecutors that guarantees no more time will be added to their lengthy prison sentences.
The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office defended the plea deal as a way to ensure that the two men will be designated in prison as inmates prone to violence even while incarcerated.
“Our big thing was to get the conviction,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said of the men’s no-contest pleas. “Now the state prison authorities will know they’re dealing with people who have acted out violently while in custody and will classify them accordingly.”
Faustino Ayala, 24, of Redwood City, and Brian Hedlin, 29, of San Bruno, were cellmates in the San Mateo County jail in April 2007 when they attacked two sheriff’s deputies in their cell, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
A deputy was attempting to move Hedlin away from his cell window when he punched the officer several times. Ayala joined in the attack, punching the deputy in the head, and then assaulted another deputy who had entered the cell, grabbing the second officer in a headlock and punching him several times in the face, according to prosecutors.
As a result of the attack, both men had faced six felony counts each and up to one additional year in custody on top of their decades-long murder sentences. But the two pleaded no contest to one felony count of threatening an officer in exchange for two-year jail sentences that can be served concurrently with their time in prison.
Ayala, a gang member convicted last year of second-degree murder for driving a teenager to a house where he shot a rival gang member to death in 2005, faces 40 years in prison.
Hedlin, who was with his brother, Shawn, when he killed a man and seriously injured three others during a drunken rampage in a South San Francisco apartment, faces at least 50 years in prison.
Copyright 2009 Contra Costa Newspapers