A former criminology professor who specialized in social deviancy and “went on an arson spree” was sentenced on Thursday to more than five years in prison after he admitted to setting four fires in California in 2021, prosecutors said.
Judge Daniel J. Calabretta of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California sentenced the man, Gary Stephen Maynard, 49, of San Jose, Calif., to 63 months in prison, court records show. He pleaded guilty to three counts of arson on federal property in February.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Maynard had admitted to setting a series of four fires in July and August 2021, including one behind firefighters who were already battling the Dixie fire, which burned more than 960,000 acres and was one of the largest wildfires in California history. Once out of prison, he will be on supervised release for three years and must pay more than $13,000 in restitution, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Maynard had initially faced four counts of arson when he was indicted in November 2021, according to prosecutors. One count was dismissed as part of a plea agreement, court records show.
In their sentencing memorandums, prosecutors and Christina Sinha, a lawyer for Mr. Maynard, recommended a sentence of five years and three months.
Ms. Sinha wrote in her memo that the sentence “accounts for all aggravating factors in this case, while also accounting for the then untreated and significant mental health issues” that Mr. Maynard was dealing with when he set the fires.