OAKLAND — The 77-year-old homeowner arrested earlier this week for the fatal shooting of a suspected burglar in his East Oakland home has apparently been released from jail without facing charges within the murder, Alameda County jail records show.
The homeowner had been held without bail since Tuesday morning on suspicion of murder after he used a crowbar and an imitation gun to kill one in every of three burglars who tried to interrupt into his home, in line with Oakland police. He was released on Thursday, when Alameda County prosecutors had a deadline to file charges within the case. The Santa Rita jail's practice just isn’t to carry suspects who haven’t yet been formally charged for greater than two days.
Although the jail's online records system indicated the homeowner was scheduled to look in court Thursday morning, that hearing never took place because no charges were filed within the case. He was not listed in jail logs as of Friday morning, nor did he appear within the county's criminal court records.
On Thursday afternoon, the Alameda County District Attorney's Office said in an announcement that “this case remains under investigation by law enforcement,” referring to the Oakland Police Department.
The lack of charges on this case got here as little surprise to several Bay Area legal experts this week. They said state law often protects homeowners from prosecution after they open fire on burglars of their home. Some also identified that prosecutors must assume they will prove the case beyond an inexpensive doubt when filing charges, moderately than counting on police standards that require probable cause for arrest.
“The prosecution is taking due care to make sure they get this case right one way or the other,” said Steve Clark, a Bay Area attorney and legal expert. “And I think a quick decision one way or the other would be a mistake before all the evidence has been reviewed.”
Oakland police didn’t immediately reply to a message searching for comment Friday.
Oakland police were called shortly before 6 p.m. Monday after someone observed two men and a lady — at the least one in every of whom was armed with a crowbar — breaking into the person's home on the corner of 98th Avenue and Burr Street, authorities said. The burglars were confronted by the homeowner after at the least one in every of them tried to climb over a back fence, Deputy Police Chief Frederick Shavies said.
When police arrived, the homeowner pointed a gun at an individual while a person, believed to be in his 40s, lay wounded just contained in the fence, authorities said. Paramedics later pronounced him dead. His name was not released.
A 3rd suspected burglar, a 31-year-old man, fled when the homeowner opened fire but was caught by police a couple of blocks away, in line with court records. He has since been charged with first-degree burglary and his bail was set at $50,000. Jail records showed he was still in custody Friday morning.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Shavies attributed the homeowner's arrest primarily to the incontrovertible fact that he “did not make any statements” when questioned by the homicide squad.
“If 'A' shoots 'B' without explanation, we can only go with what we have without any statement,” said Shavies. “All we know is that a person died.”
The homeowner's arrest caused a stir amongst legal experts throughout the Bay Area.
Daniel Horowitz, a criminal defense attorney from Lafayette, denounced the police department's statement. He and other Bay Area attorneys stressed that police must “lay out the facts” about why someone committed a criminal offense and never allow someone to fill within the gaps by remaining silent.
“It's really unbelievable to arrest someone just because someone is lying dead in your yard,” Horowitz said. “If someone is simply on your property and you have a gun and you shoot them, that's not enough to arrest them. That's just not enough.”
The case represents one other test of California's Castle Doctrine, which principally gives homeowners the power to guard their lives or property from anyone searching for to interrupt in or cause damage. Essentially, Horowitz said, if the homeowner “reasonably believed his life was in danger, he had the right to shoot and kill.”
Still, Clark stressed that such murder cases are “very fact-based investigations” and that quite a few other aspects can come into play, including whether or not the burglar was in the home and whether he was fleeing on the time of the shooting.
Shavies said Wednesday that investigators were still waiting for autopsy results to find out where the person was shot. A call from this news organization to the Alameda County coroner's office was not immediately returned Thursday.
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