On February 24, the First Judicial District Court lowered the sentence of Frank Vigil Jr., who was sixteen when he took part in the brutal 1997 assault and murder of fourteen-year-old Brandy DuVall. Even though Vigil was a juvenile at the time of the crime, he was ordered to spend life in prison without the possibility of parole — but now he’ll be eligible for parole after forty years minus “earned time,” typically shorthanded as good behavior .
The Vigil resentencing offers a new angle on the controversy over Colorado’s treatment of teen killers. In 2012, the US Supreme Court found that life without parole for juvenile homicide offenders was unconstitutional — a ruling that prompted state legislators to tweak the statute to make such individuals parole-eligible after serving forty years. But this change has been characterized as overly draconian at times, including the case of Erik Jensen, who was given life without the possibility of parole in 1999 for failing to intervene at age seventeen in friend Nate Ybanez’s murder of his mother the previous year. Governor Jared Polis grants Jensen clemency in 2020.
In the case of Vigil, however, First Judicial District DA Alexis King feels that his sentences for kidnapping and first-degree assault should have been allowed consecutively. As a result, his time behind bars would likely have been lengthened by between fifteen and 48 years, again minus earned time, beyond what he’s expected to serve after the resentencing.
“We believe the court’s sentence does not reflect the horrific and unspeakable nature of the assault, torture and kidnapping fourteen-year-old Brandi DuVall suffered before she was brutally murdered,” King says. “This was not the outcome that we or those who loved her requested.”
Westword covered the crimes against DuVall and the convictions of Vigil and his co-conspirators — David Warren, Maurice Warren, Jacob Casados, Samuel Quintana, Francisco Martinez and Danny Martinez — at length. Then staff-writer Steve Jackson’s exploration of the incident and its fallout, which ran under the banner “Dealing With the Devil,” appeared in three issues published from February to March 1999 (click to read part one, part two and part three), and multiple sequels followed.
Jackson subsequently turned his work into a book titled No Angels: The Short Life and Brutal Death of Brandaline Rose DuVall, and updated it in 2020 for Wild Blue Press. The summary: “A little before midnight on May 30, 1997, fourteen-year-old Brandy Duvall waited at a bus stop in the Denver area for a ride back to her grandparents’ home after spending the evening at a friend’s home. She was wearing a bright-red Chicago Bulls jersey bearing the number of his favorite player, Michael Jordan It was the shirt, a favorite of the Bloods gang, that attracted the five young gang members in the car that circled the block and came back to where she stood. Why Brandy got in the car that night would remain an unanswered question.”
In a comment about the new edition, Jackson wrote, “As a writer who’s seen war and famine and all the terrible things humans do to one another, and has sat through more than a dozen death penalty cases, this affected me more than all of the others. In fact, I gave up writing about true crime for several years. I just didn’t want to hear any more mothers, or siblings, or spouses, and friends of victims, or children, crying or reliving their nightmares on a “Witness stand. Or see the psychological damage done to prosecutors and detectives, social workers and witnesses. Or hear over and over, the horrific retelling of a young teen’s last hours. Eventually, I recovered and went on to write other true-crime stories and.” books. But the rape, torture and murder of fourteen-year-old Brandaline Rose DuVall, and the fallout from that, will haunt me always.”
The punishment doled out to the defendants accused of the crimes against DuVall was severe. Francisco Martinez was sentenced to death by lethal injection (the death penalty was subsequently abolished in Colorado); Danny Martinez was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole; Samuel Quintana was sentenced to 48 years; David Warren was sentenced to 32 years; Maurice Warren was sentenced to thirteen years; and Jacob Casados was sentenced to twenty years.
What reason did the court give for resentencing Vigil? “The judge only said the legislature has decided juveniles who are convicted of murder should be eligible for parole after forty years,” King says. “She did not give a reason why she was not acknowledging the other crimes committed that evening.”
King adds: “Although we do not oppose the resentencing of juveniles charged with first-degree murder, in this case, we requested for some of the charges to run consecutively to account for the horrific and violent assault Brandy DuVall endured prior to being taken to the location of her murder.”
DuVall’s family members spoke against the sentence reduction; a victim representative has not responded to Westword’s request for more details. Westword has been unable to reach members of Vigil’s family.
As for whether the Vigil resentencing represents a greater problem within the justice system, King notes that “Colorado continues to make smart, targeted changes to better address our understanding of certain populations — including youth. But there will always be harm that is so heinous and egregious that it must be reflected in the prosecution and sentencing.We are committed to aggressive prosecution of this type of
harm, and this is one of those cases.
“We respect and enforce the laws of the State of Colorado, including the change of law for juveniles who commit first-degree murder,” she continues. “However, in this case, there were additional convictions – from a jury who heard all the evidence – for other heinous acts inflicted upon fourteen-year-old Brandy DuVall prior to her murder that we believed warranted recognition of consecutive sentencing.”
The original version of this post didn’t include DA Alexis King’s call for the kidnapping and first-degree assault sentences against Frank Vigil Jr. to run consecutively and mischaracterized her objection to his resentencing. We regret the error.