LA PLATA — A Charles County judge has sentenced Amar Julio Barrera, 44, to 10 years in prison for organizing a 2025 home invasion in which a man was tased, tied up and driven to a house in Clinton, where he was beaten and held for two days.
Circuit Court Judge Makeba Gibbs imposed the sentence Oct. 20, according to an Oct. 28 release from State’s Attorney Tony Covington’s office. Prosecutors had asked for 60 years. Barrera will serve five years of supervised probation after his release, and if he violates it he could face 45 more years in prison.
The sentence closes the case against the man prosecutors called the driving force behind the attack. A Charles County jury convicted Barrera on March 20 after a five-day trial, when he faced up to 85 years. His sentencing was first set for May 21.
The attack
The case began Sept. 25, 2025, when sheriff’s officers were called to University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center for a reported assault. A man in the emergency room lobby had visible facial injuries and told officers he had been assaulted and kidnapped from his home two days earlier.
According to prosecutors, on the evening of Sept. 23, 2025, Barrera and three co-defendants, including Samantha Lynn Hergett, a relative of the victim and Barrera’s girlfriend, entered the man’s home. Two male co-defendants beat him as he tried to defend himself, and Barrera used a Taser on him until he was incapacitated.
The group dragged the man outside, bound his wrists and ankles and put him in the back seat of a white Ford F-150 that Barrera drove to Hergett’s house in Clinton. There, the two male co-defendants restrained and beat him, and Barrera and the two men threatened to kill him and his family if he tried to leave, prosecutors said. Another relative picked him up Sept. 25 and brought him back to Charles County, and his mother took him to the hospital.
Text messages showed Barrera planned the attack with Hergett and the two other men because he believed the victim had taken his property, according to the State’s Attorney’s Office.
60 years asked, 10 imposed
At sentencing, Assistant State’s Attorney Jonathan Beattie called what the victim went through “torture” and told the judge the case would not have happened without Barrera. “You cannot engage in self-help like this,” Beattie said.
Gibbs called Barrera’s actions violent and cruel and told him there was no legal justification for trying to teach a grown man a lesson, according to the release. She then structured the sentence so that only the home invasion count carries active prison time:
| Count | Maximum under Maryland law | Sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Home invasion | 25 years | 25 years, all but 10 suspended |
| Kidnapping | 30 years | 30 years, all suspended, consecutive |
| Conspiracy to commit kidnapping | 30 years | 30 years, all suspended, concurrent |
Home invasion, under Section 6-202 of the Maryland Criminal Law Article, is breaking into someone’s home with intent to commit a crime of violence, and carries up to 25 years. Kidnapping under Section 3-502 carries up to 30 years. A conspiracy conviction in Maryland cannot carry a sentence longer than the crime the conspirators planned. The suspended time is what adds up to the 45 years Barrera could face on a probation violation.
Hergett pleaded guilty March 23 to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and was sentenced April 15 to eight years in prison, prosecutors said. The release did not say how the cases against the two male co-defendants were resolved.
The case is State v. Amar Julio Barrera, C-08-CR-25-000591.
