Moments before murder trial over fatal beating of 75-year-old man, Alameda DA’s office dismisses enhancements

OAKLAND — Just minutes before presenting his overview of a murder and robbery case to jurors, an Alameda County prosecutor dropped enhancements that would have led to longer prison terms if both defendants are convicted.

Deputy District Attorney Peter McGuiness moved to dismiss special circumstances enhancements and allegations that both defendants have prior convictions that amount to a strike under California law. McGuiness described it as a decision by his office but didn’t go into detail.

The defendants, Teaunte Bailey, 28, and Demetrius Britton, 58, are both charged with murdering 75-year-old Pak Ho during his morning walk on March 9, 2021, in Oakland. Bailey has prior strike convictions for burglary and Britton has prior robbery convictions, according to court records.

When it was time to make his opening statement, McGuiness told jurors that Bailey and Britton spent the morning driving around Oakland in search of people to rob. Ho, a widower who lived alone, walked with a cane commonly carried a large amount of cash and his cellphone in a satchel, McGuinness said.

“(Ho) was a neighbor, he was a father, and he was loved,’ McGuinnes told jurors. “And on March 9, 2021, he was an easy mark…(Britton and Bailey) wanted to get some quick cash.”

Video surveillance shows Bailey run up to Ho with his arm outstretched, holding some sort of object, then strike Ho in the face before stealing his property and returning to a golden Ford SUV where Britton waited behind the wheel, McGuinness said. He said a neighbor who was also on a morning walk witnessed the first part of the robbery but ran and hid while the homicide took place.

“Mr. Ho is left for dead,” in a pool of his own blood, McGuinness told the jury, adding that Ho died at a hospital as a result of his injuries.

The case largely comes down to GPS records from an ankle monitor Bailey was wearing at the time, which puts him not just at the location of Ho’s killing but at the home invasion robbery of a 72-year-old Oakland man three weeks earlier, McGuinness said.

The defense is expected to make an opening statement Monday afternoon. Before jurors entered the courtroom, Britton’s lawyer, David Briggs, attempted to introduce testimony by a man named Melvin Hines, who claimed he overheard Bailey and Britton talking as they rode on a bus from Santa Rita Jail in Dublin to court.

Hines wrote a sworn declaration saying Bailey not only implicitly admitted his own involvement but said that a man named “Black” was the real co-perpetrator. Hines was recently sentenced to 19 years after taking a plea deal to manslaughter in an unrelated homicide case.

“‘They know you wasn’t the driver,'” Hines quoted Bailey as saying on the bus. “‘I picked up Black at the Jack in Box (sic) on Telegraph after I dropped you off.'”

Judge Scott Patton said the statement didn’t appear reliable and refused to allow jurors to hear of it.

With regard to the dismissed enhancements, while McGuinness didn’t explain the move in court, it is consistent with campaign promises made by District Attorney Pamela Price, who is now more than halfway through her first year in office. Price, who faces the beginning stages of a recall effort, campaigned against special circumstances enhancements and the Three Strikes Law, both of which greatly extend prison terms for people convicted of felonies.

If convicted as charged, Britton and Bailey face sentences of life with the possibility of parole.

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