Arizona’s man accused of attacking exotic dancers in theft at gunpoint and brutally killing one of the victims years later invested repeatedly Its decision on guilt agreements in cases of robbery, including one that would have reduced charges to a serious low -level crime with little prison time, as shown by judicial documents.
In 2021, Cudjoe Young, 29, rejected an agreement to declare himself guilty of disorderly behavior and comply 2 and a half years of prison followed by probation, according to a statement prior to the trial obtained by NBC News.
Weeks later, Young reversed and told prosecutors that the agreement wanted, according to the statement. Finally rejected the offer during a judicial hearing.
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Young faces a maximum 36 -year prison sentence combined in relation to armed robbery charges in October 2020 and tried armed robbery the following month, according to the statement.
The statement does not indicate what caused reversals.
Young, once described by its lawyers as an aspiring professional football player, is also accused of two coacked in a horrible murder plot that went to one of the victims of robbery, Mercedes Vega.
Vega was found beaten, burned and triggered in an abandoned car in an interstatal outside Phoenix on April 17, 2023, less than two years after Young rejected the plea.
Young has declared himself innocent in both cases, which are ongoing. A coacked in the case of murder, Sencere Hayes, declared himself innocent. A third defendant in that case, Jared Gray, has not been prosecuted.
The authorities have not identified a reason in the murder, but Vega’s family has said that they believe it was to silence it. Vega, 22, had been scheduled to appear at a court hearing in the case of armed robbery on the day that was found dead, according to his mother, Erika Pillsbury.
Vega’s parents have said that it could still be alive if the robbery cases had not been repeatedly delayed and if it had been better protected while waiting to testify.
A spokesman for the Maricopa County Prosecutor’s office declined to comment. In a motion presented last week, the deputy prosecutor of the County rheingsing the robberies pointed out a recent effort of Young to change lawyers in those cases and accused him of “an effort calculated to manipulate the court to postpone his trial.”
“Almost five years have passed since the crimes alleged in this case and justice has been continuously denied,” the prosecutor wrote.
Aaron Reed, a Young lawyer, declined to comment, noting that the pleas were offered before becoming Young’s lawyer. Reed also did not comment on the delays, but in a presentation he called the prosecutor’s accusations “outside the base and false.”
The prior statement shows that Young rejected three guilt offers between August 2021 and last December. On January 27, 2022, approximately one month after rejecting the charge of disorderly conduct, he reversed and said he wanted the agreement, according to the statement.
“With an agreement reached, we asked Judge Beresky to fit us for a change of declaration after lunch,” says the statement, and points out that all parties arrived at the hearing after the break.
“The defendant again rejected the plea,” says the statement.
Another proposed agreement would have reduced the charges to the trial robbery attempt with a maximum prison sentence of 3½ years. Young initially indicated that he would accept the offer, according to the statement, but needed time to put his affairs in order.
Later he rejected the statement during a judicial hearing, according to the document.
The final offer of prosecutors occurred on December 18, 2024, almost two years after Vega’s death: in exchange for declaring himself guilty of two aggravated assault positions, he would turn 7 and a half years in prison, according to the statement.
“No agreement was held because the defendant did not believe it was fruitful,” says the document.
The trial for the two cases of theft was scheduled for last month, but the procedures were delayed after Young asked that his lawyer be eliminated. Initially he planned to represent himself, said the former lawyer, although the defendant appeared in his reading of positions for murder charges last Friday with Reed, a private lawyer who represents him in cases of murder and robbery.
The court documents, police reports and interviews show that three dancers who worked in Le Girls, a Striptease club in Phoenix, told the authorities that a masked gunman stole them or tried to steal them after they finished working a late shift between November 2019 and November 2020.
Young was accused in two of the cases, including those of Vega. No suspect was identified in the third case.
Vega’s family has said that after they robbed her, she left her apartment building in Phoenix so she believed it was a safer home in the nearby Tempe. The authorities have said that she was violently kidnapped from the parking lot of that new building on the night of April 16, 2023.
Vega was found hours later at the back of a Chevrolet Malibu in the interstate 10 near Tolopah, approximately one hour west of Phoenix, after a motorist reported having seen a car in flame.
The report of a forensic doctor listed the cause of death of Vega as conflagration, forceful force and ballistic injuries. The report indicated the smell of bleach in its throat.
A declaration of probable cause in the case alleges that after Malibu was bought through an online seller, Young paid two people to pick it up. The authorities have also suggested that he could have bought the plane tickets from his coacked to Arizona from Tennessee, where Young is originally from.
The authorities have said that the digital footprints found in Malibu and in Vega’s car link their coacked to murder.
