Tyler Beerman , a onetime Santa Barbara kombucha maker and vegan restaurant owner, was sentenced to eight years and four months for stalking an ex-girlfriend, offering to pay several jail inmates to kill two sheriff’s investigators and a county judge, and intimidating a witness.
Beerman — who has been held in solitary confinement the better part of the last year — pleaded guilty before his preliminary hearing to lesser charges that carried considerably fewer years behind bars. Initially, Beerman was looking at 44 years to life for charges of conspiracy to commit murder. Ultimately, the conspiracy charges were dropped because prosecutor Benjamin Ladinig could not demonstrate any of the individuals Beerman solicited actually intended to murder any of the people Beerman wanted killed.
The evidence indicated that one thought he was merely going to blow up the car owned by one of Beerman’s ex-girlfriends, not that she would be in it at the time. Others had hoped to take advantage of Beerman financially, promising to do things they had no intention of carrying out. Without a coconspirator, Ladinig conceded, it would have been hard to persuade a jury of 12 Santa Barbarans to find Beerman guilty of conspiracy.