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A Walnut Creek man with the memorable name Rocky Lee Music faced the music last Monday in federal court in San Francisco, where he pleaded guilty to a count of carjacking in a Tri-Valley case and was sentenced to five years in custody.
April 19 of last year was a big day for Music. At about 7:30 a.m. he was observed in the Lake Merritt area of Oakland “driving a van erratically, swerving across lanes of traffic, and then driving through brush and partially into the lake,” according to the government sentencing memorandum.
When bystanders went to help, he fled the scene. He was arrested the same day and booked into Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on suspicion of auto theft.
However, at 7:23 p.m., he was released from jail by Alameda County authorities as part of a California Judicial Council policy, created in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, of releasing without bail people arrested for misdemeanors and low-level felonies to reduce overcrowding at county jails.
By 8 p.m., Music had made his way to the 5200 block of Campus Drive in Dublin, where he saw a Toyota Prius parked on the side of the road. The driver was sitting in the car.
Music attacked the driver and pulled him out of the car, then drove away, even as the driver tried to hang on, prosecutors said.
Dublin police responded and subsequently found a security camera that contained footage of Music approaching the car and then driving it away.
Music was not done for the day.
Less than a half hour later, San Ramon police responded to a call reporting an attempted carjacking at the San Ramon Library.
A woman had been sitting in her Toyota Scion talking to a friend on her phone when a man later identified as Music approached the car and attempted to open the door. The woman’s door was locked and she was able to drive off, according to a government filing.
The police found the Toyota Prius taken in the first attack in a nearby Valero gas station parking lot.
By 9:17 p.m., an officer found and confronted Music. When Music ran, the officer released a K-9 dog to stop him. Music assaulted the K-9 before he was subdued and arrested.
Music has a history of playing musical chairs with the criminal justice system.
The government noted that this was not the first time Music “has engaged in new law violations while on release or other forms of supervision. Instead, it has been a recurring theme in his criminal history.”
Music’s “record includes several failures to appear, probation violations, and revocations.”
In the last 10 years he has “sustained eight felony convictions,” according to the government’s sentencing memorandum, which include drug and theft charges as well as “a violent felony in 2016 when he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.”
Music’s back story is one full of drugs and alcohol, according to the sentencing memorandum he submitted.
His father was an alcoholic who stopped working as a result of injury when Music was 5 and stayed at home with the kids while his wife worked. Music began drinking when he was seven or eight years old and “by the time he was in his twenties, he was consuming a couple of quarts of vodka per day,” a habit that continued through the offenses of April 19. He also used methamphetamine, combining it with alcohol, “in order to balance himself.”
According to his sentencing memorandum, “the system continued to arrest and release Mr. Music, and Mr. Music continued to cycle in and out of jail, each time trying unsuccessfully to control his addiction on his own.”
Given the violent nature of the carjacking and his prior offenses, the federal sentencing guidelines suggested a range of 77-96 months. However, because Music pleaded guilty before trial, the prosecutors recommended a sentence of 60 months.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers concurred.
