A Solano County Superior Court jury on Thursday found a 45-year-old Fairfield man guilty of the first-degree murder of his girlfriend last year in Fairfield.
The panel of nine women and three men declared its unanimous finding against Mark Anthony Randle Jr. shortly before 2 p.m. in Department 23 in the Justice Building in Vallejo.
Upon hearing the verdict, Randle, dressed in a light-blue checked shirt over dark gray slacks, appeared shocked and stared straight ahead at the court clerk, who read the verdict aloud.
Afterward, Judge John B. Ellis thanked the jurors for their service, adding that they saw “exceptionally good” attorneys “at the top of their game” during the nearly three-week trial.
In the end, jurors came to believe in the case presented by Deputy District Attorneys Mary Nguyen and Elaine Kuo. Deputy Public Defenders Dustin W. Latka and Arielle Hostetler represented Randle.
After jurors filed out of the courtroom, Ellis did not schedule a sentencing date but instead ordered that Randle and the attorneys return for a sentencing setting at 8:30 a.m. Aug.23.
Afterward, a bailiff handcuffed Randle, a large man at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing nearly 250 pounds, then led him out of the courtroom.
He was charged with killing his girlfriend, Erica Brown, on Aug. 20 at the Sunrise Drive home they shared in Fairfield. Her body has not been found.
Nguyen, the lead prosecutor, built her case largely on the eyewitness testimony of Jan E. Agacinski, a former sexual partner with Randle.
In exchange for her testimony, the Solano County District Attorney’s Office dropped an accessory-after-the-fact charge against her.
Agacinski spent two long days on the witness stand, providing information about the date and time of the killing, seeing the physical condition of Brown, whom she saw lying naked on a bed but covered with a blanket some time just before midnight, her face severely battered and bloodied. She checked Brown’s pulse and found it to be “faint.”
Agacinski also testified that, after visiting the Sunrise Drive home for a second time in the early hours of Aug. 21, Randle told her Brown was dead. He later loaded her body, wrapped in a blanket, into a black Mercedes parked in the driveway.
Agacinski’s statement, coming on Day 3 of the trial and her second on the witness stand, followed cross-examination by Latka, who also made a reference to the body being loaded into a car and “blood in the driveway” of the Fairfield home.
In an attempt to whittle away at the prosecution’s case, Latka noted that Agacinski did not tell Fairfield investigators about the driveway blood during two interviews.
And she admitted that she didn’t call police on Aug. 20 or the next day.
“In fact, you never called the police,” and only did so when arrested, Latka said.
Agacinski had earlier testified that she was “afraid” of Randle.
She recalled that in 2019 she was beaten and raped “and the guy that did it got off scot-free,” adding that her initial false statements to investigators were prompted by fears “of what might happen to me, my son, my family.”
Nguyen reminded her that Randle told her that he beat Brown and, during a visit on Aug. 20 to the Sunrise home that he repeated, “Why did she make me do it?”
Randle, she added, also told her, while they were in the house and Brown was lying nearly unconscious on the bed, “She’ll be fine.”
Fingerprint and cellphone data also figured in the trial.
Spring Langston, a latent fingerprint specialist with the state Department of Justice in Sacramento, testified that she was able to determine, using FBI and civilian databases, that Randle’s prints and those of Agacinski were found in vehicles used by Randle. They were a Chevrolet Malibu and a black Mercedes sedan. The Malibu reportedly was found burned and near a tow yard in Richmond.
Using graphics from a PowerPoint presentation, Reva Headley, a crime analyst with the state DOJ, told Nguyen that, by using “cellphone mapping,” she was able to track the cellphone use of several people, including Randle and Agacinski.
Headley’s data showed specific telephone numbers, to whom they’re registered, when and where the calls were made, their length in minutes and seconds, and the location of cellphone towers used to route the calls.
She appeared to confirm calls were made between Randle and Agacinski before Agacinski arrived at Randle’s home on Aug. 20, as Agacinski testified, and also when she returned to the home on Aug. 21, when Randle placed the body of Erica Brown in the black Mercedes.
As previously reported, Randle was arrested and taken into custody on Sept. 14 in 7000 block of Circle Parkway in Fairfield. The criminal complaint was filed on Sept. 18.
At sentencing, Randle, who remains in custody at Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield, faces 25 years to life, and possibly more time for convictions of any previous felonies.