By Mansour Taleb-Ahmed
OAKLAND, CA – Police misconduct has been alleged in the case of Khalil Shawn King—charged with felonies that include possession of loaded conceal firearms, unlawful transportation of a machine gun and bump stock—here in Alameda County Superior Court.
The Pitchess motion challenges the credibility of the officers—as many as four of them, according to court documents.
King is charged with seven felonies, including possession of a machine gun and manufacture and sale of firearms. He has a pretrial March 7.
During the Pitchess motion, Judge C. Don Clay introduced the gang expert’s significance in the case by noting: “I got T. Jones, who communicated with the gang expert, has posted some posts regarding certain types of people, it looks like, from the African community in association with some things. The categories as I see it answer all this.”
Then the judge listed what the other officers were charged with, including “fabrication, dishonesty, failed to follow certain policies, false statement, false arrest.”
The judge made some assumptions about the case by stating, “It appears to be multiple homicides, must be some gang allegations and relationship ’cause we got T. Jones who is an expert in the game.”
The judge also referred briefly to one case about an officer charged for the planting of evidence and who took the report away from the defendant, resulting in the officer’s indictment in federal court and suspension from ever serving as an officer.
Right after this, the judge discussed one of the main facts of this case being the lead investigator presenting a complete recording of the exchange the investigator had with a suspect.
The prosecutor, Malisha Jones, argued, “The issue your Honor is that there is selective recording, with respect to the interaction with Mr. Lowls, and because of the well-known unreliability of accomplices that is what is raising our concerns with respect to Officer Rumales credibility.”
Defense Counsel Foxall Richard Foxall responded by arguing that “there was a recording but it’s selective because some is materially missing in those recordings, sir.”
The prosecution strongly countered and insisted that it was not missing, with the DDA noting, “He has multiple interactions with the accomplice, some were recorded and some deliberately not recorded.”
Eventually, the question of whether or not to include or even discuss charges such as excessive force and bribes was raised to the court, in which the judge argued that bribes were included in the realm of fabrication of evidence and dishonesty, noting, “If you’re biased, you’re dishonest.”
For the account of “excessive force” the judge did not seem to think that anything presented in the case met that threshold, and noted, “I don’t see if there is an issue here, at least, with what has been given to me.”
Subsequently, a debate was raised about whether or not a gang expert should be testifying during the trial. The prosecution did not feel like it was relevant, whereas the judge strongly disagreed by highlighting how significant and relevant it would be for the trial.
“I’m not going to argue in the defense case but, there are different types of an expert: A gun expert is pretty neutral but, a gang expert goes to the substances of particular clauses and whether or not, how he presents that evidence and he/she says that is relevant in order for the jury to make a final decision on what is true,” the judge said.
He finished by underlining the relevance when it comes to the substance of the case in differentiating the two types of experts: “It’s more substance than you got from a gun except telling you how it is manufactured, the type of weapon.”
He then closed by ruling it would be the just thing to do to let the defense properly present its case.
