Judge Rejects Bid to Toss Case Against Former San Leandro Officer Jason Fletcher

An Alameda County judge allowed a case against a former San Leandro police officer to proceed to trial on Friday after a dramatic hearing in which three former prosecutors invoked the Fifth Amendment and the current deputy district attorney acknowledged “outrageous prosecutorial misconduct” by his own office.

Judge Thomas Reardon denied a defense motion to dismiss charges against former San Leandro police officer Jason Fletcher, 55, accused of killing Steven Taylor, 33, inside a Walmart in 2020.

Fletcher was the first officer to arrive at the store after a security guard reported that Taylor tried to leave without paying. Fletcher moved toward Taylor and tried to grab an aluminum baseball bat out of his hand.

He first used his Taser, causing Taylor to stumble forward, and then shot him in the chest — all within 40 seconds.

Then-District Attorney Nancy O’Malley filed charges in 2020, one of the first cases charged under a change in California law that raised the legal threshold for justified police use of deadly force.

When Pamela Price succeeded O’Malley three years later, Fletcher’s lawyer, Mike Rains, filed a motion asking that the case be turned over to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office.

Rains argued that Fletcher didn’t stand to have a fair trial under Price, who had worked as a progressive prosecutor before taking over the district attorney’s office.

The motion was granted in March 2024, but the case returned to Alameda County this year when Reardon pointed out that voters had recalled Price.

After current District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson inherited the case earlier this year, her office discovered that prosecutors under Price had sought opinions from several police use-of-force experts who concluded Fletcher’s actions were not criminal, according to court filings.

Those opinions were not disclosed to the defense — a violation of the district attorney’s discovery obligations, both sides now agree.

Fletcher’s defense filed a voluminous motion to dismiss in August, which was heard on Friday.

Three former employees under Price invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at the start of the hearing, including Zachary Linowitz, who previously oversaw the case, and James Conger, the former head of the unit in charge of cases against public officials.

“I stand before you in a position where I’ve never stood before,” Deputy District Attorney Casey Bates told the judge, “bringing forth what appears to be misconduct of others in my office. I’ve never been in a court where colleagues of mine asserted their right against self-incrimination. But that happened not just once, but three times.”

Referring to one of the suppressed expert opinions, Bates said, “Your honor, I believe they received information they didn’t want to hear.”

“I don’t know where you get that,” Reardon said, repeatedly indicating that he was unconvinced that former prosecutors had committed any so-called Brady violations for failing to disclose evidence to the defense.

Reardon grilled Bates on whether the district attorney’s office agreed with the defense on any of three reasons to dismiss the case: due process violations, gross governmental misconduct or “in the interests of justice.”

“I agree that there has been outrageous prosecutorial misconduct,” Bates said. “I don’t know if it rises to the level of dismissal. I think that’s for the court to decide.”

The judge became more terse when Bates declined to state a clearer position. “You won’t answer the court’s question, so I think I’m done with you,” he said.

Taylor’s mother and grandmother said after the hearing that they were grateful for the judge.

“The judge did the DA’s job,” Taylor’s grandmother, Addie Kitchen, said. “The judge had to step up and do his damn job.”

Reardon ultimately found there had been no Brady violation and ruled that any misconduct did not warrant dismissing the case. He also declined to use his discretion to end the prosecution.

“I want 12 citizens of the county to opine,” he said. “They may just have a difficult case, and they may just have to try it.”

Taylor’s family and civil rights groups, including the Oakland-based Anti Police-Terror Project, accused the District Attorney’s Office of “not seeking justice for Steven Taylor but … instead protecting the officer who killed him” in the days leading up to the hearing.

“I have no confidence in Mr. Bates,” Kitchen said. “I’m glad that the judge felt the need to present the case to a jury. Let the jury make a decision.”

KQED’s Katie DeBenedetti contributed to this story.