Three men accused of chopping down three saguaros last fall have been sentenced to three years' probation.
Last October, a Pima County Parks employee who received a phone tip discovered three saguaros had been chopped down at the Rillito River Park.
One week later, an informant told police he was with several people when Joshua Huffman, 20, pulled out an ax and began to chop down some mesquite trees, according to court documents. The informant said Huffman then went to a nearby store, stole two more axes, and gave them to Christopher Newman, 19, and Lincoln Herget, 20, so they could chop down the saguaros.
All three men were charged with criminal damage of between $2,000 and $10,000 and theft of protected native plants.
The men pleaded guilty to criminal damage of between $250 and $2,000 in exchange for dismissal of the theft charge.
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On Friday, Pima County Superior Court Judge Christopher Browning sentenced Herget and Huffman to three years' probation. As part of the probation, they were ordered to serve 60 days in jail and perform 300 hours of community service. He also ordered them to attend anger-management and cognitive-skills classes.
Last week, Browning gave Newman the same sentence.
The judge ordered the three to pay a total of $3,450 in restitution to Pima County Natural Resources.
Although Browning placed Huffman on intensive probation with an electronic monitoring device and said he is to stay in a halfway house, the judge did so knowing that Huffman would have to first post $250,000 in a sexual assault case.
According to court records, Huffman and Joseph Anthony DeFrancesco, 23, are accused of luring a 13-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy into a tunnel near Tucson Mall with promises of marijuana and then robbing them. The pair are also accused of forcing the girl to perform oral sex on them at gunpoint.
DeFrancesco, who has a criminal history dating back to the age of 12, remains jailed on $500,000 bond, jail records show.
The pair are scheduled for trial in September.
