Blaming prior administration, Alameda DA dismisses 2 of 3 murder charges against Oakland man
Delonzo Logwood was the subject of a controversial plea deal rejected at the last minute by the same judge who agreed to dismiss the charges Wednesday morning.
OAKLAND — In the latest shocking twist over a man accused of killing three people for a West Oakland gang when he was teenager, Alameda County prosecutors have dismissed two of the three murder counts just days before he was set to go to trial.
Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced the dismissals in a Wednesday evening news release, hours after a county prosecutor appeared before Judge Mark McCannon to request dismiss charges that 32-year-old Delonzo Logwood murdered Richard Carter and Zaire Washington. A third murder charge over the killing of Eric Ford still stands, and is set to go to trial soon.
All the alleged crimes occurred when Logwood was 18 and his co-defendant, Dijon Holifield, was 17. The original charges included a total of five murder counts, three involving Logwood.
Logwood’s case has been rife with surprises since last March, when McCannon made the rare move of refusing to accept a plea deal that would have sentenced Logwood to 15 years and dismissed all three murder counts in favor of a single voluntary manslaughter charge. Washington’s mother spoke out against the deal, telling McCannon in a letter she feared Logwood would kill again if released.
Price responded by asking an outside judge to take McCannon off the case. That motion was rejected Wednesday morning, before prosecutors brought forth the dismissal motion
In a written statement, Price — who was sworn in last January after winning the 2022 election on a justice reform platform — blamed the previous administration under then-DA Nancy O’Malley for mishandling a plea deal that led to a key witness being unavailable for trial.
“We concluded that the previous administration had overcharged and mismanaged the case, and that’s why we worked so hard in January and February to arrive at a negotiated settlement,” Price said.
The 21-page motion to dismiss the charges, filed Wednesday, says that prosecutors were informed in April that a key witness was refusing to cooperate. The witness testified at Logwood’s 2018 preliminary hearing that he discussed some shootings and witnessed others involving Logwood and his co-defendant, Holifield, but only agreed to testify after prosecutors reduced a 31-year prison term by 12 years.
After testifying at the preliminary hearing, the man refused to cooperate for Logwood’s upcoming trial, prosecutors said in court records. And the deal he originally signed didn’t require him to. The motion to dismiss acknowledges prosecutors could have read the man’s preliminary hearing testimony in at trial, but determined that wouldn’t be sufficient on its own.
At the preliminary hearing, Holiwood’s lawyer, Chris Martin, attacked the plea deal as an “incredible inducement” and argued the man was lying.
“If you thought about this in the context of entrapment, would someone commit a crime for that kind of a payment? I think that the average person probably would,” Martin said at the 2018 hearing, minutes before Judge Vernon Nakahara rejected the arguments and ordered both men to stand trial. Holifield has been severed from Logwood’s case and is being prosecuted in juvenile court.
The former trial prosecutor — who resigned just days before McCannon rejected Logwood’s proposed plea deal — argued in 2018 that the key witness’ testimony was corroborated by other evidence. The motion to dismiss says the two murder counts were based solely on his word.