The Arizona man accused of targeting exotic dancers in gunpoint robberies and brutally killing one of the victims years later repeatedly reversed his decision on robbery plea deals, including one that would have reduced the charges to a low-level felony with little prison time, according to court documents.
According to a joint pretrial statement obtained by NBC News, Cudjoe Young, 29, declined an offer to plead guilty to disorderly conduct in 2021 and serve 2½ years in prison followed by probation.
Young later changed his mind and told prosecutors that he wanted the deal, according to the statement. He ultimately turned down the offer during a court hearing.
According to the statement, Young faces a maximum 36-year prison sentence combined for armed robbery in October 2020 and attempted armed robbery the following month.
The statement does not explain what prompted the reversals.
Young, once described by his lawyers as an aspiring professional football player, is also charged with two co-defendants in a heinous murder plot against one of the robbery victims, Mercedes Vega.
Vega was discovered beaten, burned, and shot in an abandoned car on an interstate outside Phoenix on April 17, 2023, less than two years after Young rejected the plea.
Young has pleaded not guilty in both cases, which are ongoing. A co-defendant in the murder case, Sencere Hayes, has pleaded not guilty. A third defendant in that case, Jared Gray, has not been arraigned.
Authorities have not identified a motive in the killing, but Vega’s family has said they believe it was to silence her. Vega, 22, had been scheduled to appear at a court hearing in the armed robbery case on the day she was found dead, according to her mother, Erika Pillsbury.
Vega’s parents have said she might still be alive had the robbery cases not been repeatedly delayed and had she been better protected while she waited to testify.
A spokesperson from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office declined to comment. In a motion filed last week, the deputy county attorney prosecuting the robberies cited Young’s recent attempt to change attorneys in those cases, accusing him of “a calculated effort to manipulate the court into postponing his trial.”
“It has been almost five years since the crimes alleged in this case and justice has been continually denied,” the prosecutor’s office stated.
Aaron Reed, Young’s lawyer, declined to comment, pointing out that the pleas were entered before he became Young’s attorney. Reed declined to comment on the delays, but in a filing, he described the prosecutor’s allegations as “off base and false.”
According to the pretrial statement, Young rejected three plea offers between August 2021 and December of last year. According to the statement, on January 27, 2022, about a month after rejecting the disorderly conduct plea, he reversed himself and said he wanted the deal.
“With an agreement reached, we asked [the judge] to fit us in for a change of plea after lunch,” the statement reads, noting that all parties arrived after the break.
“Defendant again rejected the plea,” the statement reads.
The proposed agreement would have reduced the charges to attempted armed robbery, with a maximum prison sentence of 3½ years. According to the statement, Young initially indicated that he would accept the offer but needed more time to arrange his affairs.
He later rejected the plea at a court hearing, according to the document.
On December 18, 2024, nearly two years after Vega’s death, prosecutors made a final offer: he could serve 7½ years in prison if he pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault.
“No settlement was held because Defendant didn’t believe it would be fruitful,” the letter states.
The trial for the two robbery cases was set to begin last month, but it was postponed after Young requested that his lawyer be removed.
He initially planned to represent himself, according to the former lawyer, but he appeared at his murder arraignment last Friday with Reed, a private attorney who is representing him in both the murder and robbery cases.
Court documents, police reports, and interviews show that three dancers from Le Girls, a Phoenix strip club, told authorities that a masked gunman robbed or attempted to rob them after they finished working late shifts from November 2019 to November 2020.
Young faced charges in two of the cases, including Vega’s. In the third case, no suspects were identified.
Vega’s family claims that after being robbed, she left her Phoenix apartment building for what she thought was a safer home in nearby Tempe.
Authorities say she was violently abducted from the new building’s parking garage on the night of April 16, 2023.
Vega was discovered hours later in the back seat of a Chevrolet Malibu on Interstate 10 near Tonopah, about an hour west of Phoenix, after a motorist reported seeing a burning vehicle.
According to a medical examiner’s report, Vega died as a result of conflagration, blunt force, or ballistic injuries. The report mentioned the smell of bleach in her throat.
According to the probable cause statement in the case, Young paid two people to pick up the Malibu after buying it from an online seller. Authorities have also suggested that he may have purchased plane tickets to Arizona for his co-defendants from Tennessee, where he is originally from.
Fingerprints discovered in the Malibu and Vega’s car are believed to link his co-defendants to the murder.
