OAKLAND — Weeks after an Alameda County decide shot down a plea deal that may have sentenced a person accused of three homicides to fifteen years, the district lawyer introduced she is shifting to disqualify him from all prison circumstances.
Alameda County DA Pamela Value introduced the transfer Wednesday afternoon on a YouTube video, hours after Decide Mark McCannon denied motions by each the prosecution and protection to recuse him from the case of Delonzo Logwood. Within the video, Value took goal at McCannon, saying the decide “overstepped his boundaries” and “created a firestorm of prejudicial feedback that don't, in my opinion, serve justice.”
It's an unusual however hardly exceptional apply that's extra usually utilized by protection attorneys. Final July, then-DA Nancy O’Malley, Value’s predecessor, wrote that her prosecutors “can not have a good and neutral trial or listening to or any prison process” earlier than one other decide, Amy Sekany, in a movement to disqualify her.
In Contra Costa County, the Public Defender’s workplace has moved to disqualify numerous judges a number of occasions lately. The Alameda County Public Defender additionally sought to take away a superior courtroom decide final yr as nicely.
Value didn’t specify which of McCannon’s feedback she was referring to, nor did she say which regulation her workplace will cite to disqualify McCannon. State regulation gives two choices — flood a decide with disqualification petitions in a apply generally generally known as papering, or file a singular movement with a a lot greater authorized customary to forcibly recuse the decide for bias.
Value’s precise wording — that her workplace will file “a movement” to disqualify McCannon from “any prison circumstances being prosecuted by my workplace” — suggests she was referring to the latter choice, although merely papering McCannon would seemingly produce sooner outcomes. The California code of civil process permits attorneys on both aspect one alternative per case to disqualify a decide just by asking for recusal, supplied there hasn’t been a factual listening to within the case.
Final month, McCannon, a former prosecutor, rejected a plea deal for Logwood, an alleged West Oakland gang member accused of murdering three individuals when he was 18. McCannon stated he had “many sleepless nights” whereas considering the deal.
McCannon advised Logwood, “You'll be able to’t suppose an apology will make this all higher” and at an earlier listening to known as it one of the lenient offers he’d ever seen.
On Wednesday, simply hours earlier than Value introduced she was shifting to disqualify McCannon, he rejected motions by each prosecutors and Logwood’s lawyer to take away him from the case. The Berkeley Scanner wrote that McCannon chided the attorneys, telling them, “I'm not the low-hanging fruit or scapegoat for the debacle this case has turn out to be.”
“It appears to me you all don’t like my ruling, so that you suppose that I must be disqualified,” he later added, the Berkeley Scanner reported.
Logwood’s lawyer says he's planning to attraction McCannon’s ruling, and in the meantime the clock is ticking for Logwood’s trial. Jury choice has been tentatively scheduled for April 17, and except Logwood waives time, that’s when it'll begin. Logwood was charged, together with Dijon Holifield, in 2015. Since then, Holifield’s case has been despatched to juvenile courtroom as a result of he was 17 on the time of the alleged offenses.
Including to the confusion, the deputy district lawyer who had been dealing with Logwood’s case for years not too long ago resigned, becoming a member of roughly two dozen attorneys and inspectors who've stop, been fired or positioned on go away since Value took the oath of workplace in January.