DA Pamela Price seeks removal of ‘overly zealous’ lawyer from San Leandro officer’s manslaughter case
Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price wants to keep a well-known Bay Area defense attorney from representing the San Leandro police officer charged in a 2020 manslaughter case — claiming the lawyer “acted overzealously” and sought to “undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system,” according to court documents filed this week.
Price’s request this week targeting attorney Michael Rains — as well as his firm, Rains, Lucia, Stern, St. Phalle & Silver — comes just months after Rains himself tried unsuccessfully to have Price booted from the case over concerns that she was deeply biased against police officers.
In a press release announcing the move, Price pilloried Rains for an “unethical and improper breach of the professional rules of professional conduct as well as a violation of the standards of ethics that apply to lawyers.”
“Today my office took at stand for justice,” Price’s statement said.
Rains shot back Tuesday, calling Price “ethically bankrupt” and her request “ridiculous.” He also suggested the request was merely a ploy to railroad Rains’ defense of Jason Fletcher, the San Leandro police officer criminally charged in the 2020 shooting death of Steven Taylor, 33.
“This is just a desperate attempt to get me off the case,” Rains said. “Becuase she knows what’s going to happen, and Jason Fletcher is going to be acquitted on these charges”
It all stems from a voluntary manslaughter case that — when charges were first filed more than three years ago — represented the first time in more than a decade that a law enforcement officer in Alameda County had faced criminal prosecution in the death of a civilian.
On April 18, 2020, Taylor grabbed an aluminum baseball bat and a tent in a Walmart store before trying to leave without paying, according to authorities. When Fletcher arrived, a 40-second confrontation ensued that ended with Fletcher pulling his gun and fatally shooting Taylor, according to court documents.
Prosecutors later charged Fletcher with voluntary manslaughter, suggesting that “Mr. Taylor posed no threat of imminent deadly force or serious bodily injury to defendant Fletcher or anyone else in the store.”
Fletcher is awaiting trial in the case, and has pleaded not guilty. On Friday, a judge denied a request by the city of San Leandro to avoid turning over the entire personnel files of Fletcher and Officer Stefan Overton, who shocked Taylor with his Taser after Fletcher fired his gun, court records show.
Price’s motion this week appeared intrinsically tied to a similar request filed by Rains earlier this year that sought to have the district attorney herself removed from the case.
In April, Rains said Price was unfit to prosecute the officer, given that she had shown “a consistent, publicly proclaimed animosity against the police profession in its entirety.”
In the process, Rains relied on a sworn declaration by one of Price’s former prosecutors, Amilcar “Butch” Ford, who described multiple conversations he had with Kwixuan Maloof, then the head of Price’s Public Accountability Unit, during the first couple weeks of January. In one instance, Ford recalled Maloof saying that, “I came here to charge cops. They better be ready. They better Google me,” according to the court declaration.
A judge later denied Rains’ request to remove Price.
Afterward, Price filed a misdemeanor charge against Ford — by then her most vocal political rival — with defending after public prosecution as the prosecutor. Ford faces a Nov. 27 trial date for the charge, which is tied to a seldom-used portion of the state’s business and professions code aimed at rooting out corruption. He has pleaded not guilty.
Price’s motion this week claimed that Ford’s declaration divulged privileged work product, and that Rains used that information to “gain a tactical advantage” in the Fletcher case. It also alleged that Rains’ “solicitation and misappropriation” of that information “constitutes professional misconduct.” In addition, the district attorney alleged, “the conversations that Ford revealed to Rains have colored his perception of the case.”
Rains challenged that allegation Tuesday, saying that it was “completely unsupported by the law or the facts.” He added that there was “no privileged attorney work product ever shared with me, because it wasn’t even work product.”
The issue is scheduled to be resolved at a Nov. 20 hearing.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.