Judge removes Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price from manslaughter case against former San Leandro police officer

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s office was barred Friday from prosecuting a San Leandro police officer after a judge found that her office was too biased to fairly oversee the case, according to the officer’s attorney.

The decision to toss Price from the manslaughter case of former San Leandro police officer Jason Fletcher marks at least the second time this year that a judge has removed the district attorney’s office from a case over concerns about Price’s impartiality.

At a hearing Friday afternoon, Alameda County Judge Thomas Reardon granted a motion by Fletcher’s attorney, Michael Rains, to disqualify Price from the case, according to Rains. The case now will be handed off to the California Attorney General’s Office, though Price can appeal the decision.

Rains hailed the judge’s move Friday as “the right decision.”

“The judge’s ruling became necessary not by anything I’ve done, but by everything that Pam Price has done,” Rains said. “This decision was necessary, because Pam Price doesn’t get it. She’s made this bed for herself by her own decisions and actions. And that’s why the decision was the right decision. It was necessitated by the facts involved.”

A message to Price’s office left by the Bay Area News Group was not immediately returned early Friday evening.

Reardon’s ruling Friday marked the latest twist in a widely-watched manslaughter prosecution that has seen attorneys on each side try to kick each other off of the case. It came about 10 months after the judge denied a similar motion by Rains to remove Price from the case; in January, the same judge denied a dueling motion by Price to remove Rains.

Yet Rains made numerous new arguments in his most recent legal filing asking to have the first-term district attorney removed from the case, which appeared to strike a different chord with the judge.

Rains pointed to several instances where he alleged that Price showed bias over the last 10 months, including once posing for a picture in a courthouse hallway the day in October when her office served Rains with the motion seeking to boot him from the case. In that photo, the district attorney appeared “arm in arm with some of the same supporters wearing Justice for Steven Taylor shirts,” according to Rains’ motion said.

The tit-for-tat legal duel centered on 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, Steven 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, 33,, according to court documents.

Price has repeatedly made public mention of Taylor’s death while working to reimagine how justice is dispensed across the East Bay. A key component of that vision has been vocal calls to hold police officers and law enforcement officials accountable when they are accused of breaking the laws they’re entrusted to enforce.

Shortly after taking office, she created a new Public Accountability Unit and initially vowed to reinvestigate eight cases, including six fatal police shootings and two in-custody deaths. The unit has also gone on to oversee the prosecution of other cases, including an Oakland police officer accused of lying on the stand in a murder trial, as well as a former Fremont city manager accused of fraud and embezzlement.

Yet her office has received pushback in at least one other instance.

Less than three months ago, another Alameda County judge tossed Price’s office from the prosecution of Amilcar “Butch” Ford, a former employee of Price who became one of her loudest critics.

In that instance, a judge ruled that Price’s office had a “significant conflict of interest” in prosecuting Ford, who was charged over the summer with violating a little-used section of the state’s business and professions code.

Price alleged that Ford broke the law when he filed a declaration while still employed by Price that supported Rains’ first bid to disqualify the district attorney from Fletcher’s case. In the sworn declaration, Ford described multiple conversations he had with Kwixuan Maloof, then the head of Price’s Public Accountability Unit, including one instance where Maloof allegedly said, “I came here to charge cops. They better be ready. They better Google me,” according to the court declaration.

In and early January ruling, Alameda County Superior Court Judge James Cramer pointed to specific instances when Price appeared to revel in Ford’s prosecution, including after the prosecutor had his fingerprints and picture taken at the Santa Rita Jail as part of the county’s standard booking process.

“I’m not saying she has expressed an opinion that a member of the public cannot express — she has every right to do so,” Cramer said. “The problem here for me is that the elected district attorney has made repeated comments about the defendant in this case, Mr. Ford.”

Price’s office has since announced plans to appeal that ruling.