Alameda County DA Retakes Police Manslaughter Case From State After Price’s Recall

Alameda County’s district attorney will once again lead the prosecution of a former San Leandro police officer charged with manslaughter, a judge decided Friday, a year after former head prosecutor Pamela Price was barred from the case over allegations of bias.

The protracted case against Jason Fletcher, 54, has been in limbo for years since Fletcher’s attorney first asked a judge to stop Price’s office from prosecuting in April 2023.

Fletcher was charged in April 2020 after fatally shooting Steven Taylor, 33, in a San Leandro Walmart. Taylor’s family has been advocating for the case to be prosecuted in the county where he lived since a judge turned it over to the state attorney general’s office last year.

“We’re just so thankful that we’ll be here in Alameda County,” Taylor’s grandmother, Addie Kitchen, said after the hearing. “Steven was raised here in Alameda County. He went to school in Alameda County. His friends are in Alameda County. He died in Alameda County.”

According to prosecutors, Taylor, who had schizophrenia and bipolar depression, was holding an aluminum bat and allegedly trying to shoplift. Fletcher fatally shot him within 40 seconds of arriving on the scene.

The charges against Fletcher were first brought by Price’s predecessor, Nancy O’Malley. After Price took office as district attorney in January 2023, Fletcher’s lawyer, Mike Rains, filed a motion asking that the case be turned over to Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office. He 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.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon rejected that motion, and a dueling motion from Price to bar Rains months later, but a second motion from Rains asking to remove Price was granted in March 2024.

Rains’ second motion alleged that Price had shown bias on multiple occasions, including on one instance when she posed for a photo in courthouse halls with people wearing “Justice for Steven Taylor” shirts, the same day that she filed a recusal motion against Rains.

On Friday, though, Reardon turned the case back over to Alameda County against Rains’ wishes. He said that given Price’s recall and the appointment of new District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson, the recusal was no longer relevant, and Rains would need to make a new argument for Jones Dickson’s recusal if he saw fit.

Rains told the court that while he would prefer the case stay with the attorney general’s office, he didn’t have a factual or legal basis to request Jones Dickson’s recusal.

While the case is back under Alameda County’s jurisdiction for now, Fletcher’s attorneys are still arguing to have the entire case thrown out over behavior by Price’s former deputy district attorney, Zachary Linowitz.

In the motion filed last month, Rains alleged that Linowitz suppressed the statements of three use-of-force experts who were favorable to Fletcher. He accused Linowitz of suppressing the opinions from both defense attorneys and other members of the district attorney’s office, and said he “shopped around” for an expert who would “tell them what they wanted to hear.”

Rains said the move violates Brady v. Maryland, which requires prosecutors to disclose material evidence that favors the defendant to their attorneys.

“This case presents a particularly egregious Brady violation inasmuch as the withholding appears to have been intentional because the disclosure of this evidence would have necessitated … dismissal of the baseless charges against Fletcher that former DA Price and others publicly traded on for her personal political gain,” the motion reads.

A hearing on the motion to throw out the case was set for Oct. 31.

If the motion to dismiss Fletcher’s case is not granted, he will stand trial in January.