OAKLAND — Although still a fugitive, an Oakland man who volunteered for Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s campaign has been charged with attempted murder in an October 2022 shooting outside a Dimond district bar, court records show.
What remains to be seen is whether Price, because of a potential conflict of interest, will recuse her office from prosecuting the case once Shawn Martin, 47, is arrested. A request for comment from the DA’s Office was not returned as of Wednesday evening.
Martin became a prominent supporter of Price in the November 2022 election, after he was acquitted of murder charges in a 2017 shooting. His case caused a political firestorm when his attorney accused former District Attorney Nancy O’Malley of allowing prosecutorial misconduct to run rampant.
Price later highlighted Martin’s story and his work as a volunteer when she campaigned for office, writing online that she earned his support “because in his words, I was the only lawyer he called who tried to help him recover his life after 7 years of wrongful incarceration.”
Martin was formally charged May 11 with six felony counts stemming from the Dimond district shooting and two more felony counts resulting from a January 2022 robbery and assault in Oakland, in which he is accused of punching another man unconscious and stealing personal items from him after the two were involved in a vehicle collision.
The shooting counts include attempted murder, assault with a semi-automatic firearm, felon in possession of a firearm, carrying a loaded firearm on one’s person in a city, carrying a concealed firearm and possession of ammunition by a prohibited person.
The other two counts are second-degree robbery and assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury. Before the formal charging, which carry no bail, he had been sought on probable cause warrants in the two cases.
Besides the eight felony charges, the complaint includes numerous enhancement clauses that could increase sentencing for Martin if he is convicted. It also lists two prior felony convictions: possession of a firearm by a felon in 2017, which he went to prison for and an October 2005 conviction for the same offense in Alameda County that he was given a probation term for.
In 2017, Martin was convicted of murdering his neighbor during an argument, but an appeals court ruled that the trial prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Butch Ford, misstated the law while making his case to jurors and overturned Martin’s conviction. In 2021, Martin’s attorney attempted to recuse the entire DA’s office under O’Malley by arguing misconduct was so rampant that Martin couldn’t get a fair trial.
O’Malley retaliated by instructing her lawyers to stop holding plea deal negotiations with public defenders outside of courtrooms, but walked back the policy after the chief public defender wrote her a letter citing legal precedent that made such restrictions illegal.
In his second trial in April 2021, Martin was acquitted of murder after his attorney argued the shooting was self-defense.
The fresh charges against Martin were filed last week by Deputy District Attorney Rebecca Warren, who has one foot out the door and who used her resignation letter as an opportunity to take political shots at Price, calling her soft on crime and “condescending and disrespectful” to the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Warren is headed to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, as part of a mini-exodus of Alameda prosecutors, and filed the Martin case the day before her official last day.
Warren has criticized Price’s handling of the case involving the toddler Jasper Wu, who was killed in November 2021 by a stray bullet from a rolling gun battle along Interstate 880 in Oakland. Warren also alleged that one of Price’s high-ranking staff members made racist comments about Samoans.
“We deserve better,” said Warren in her letter, adding that Price’s “disrespectful treatment of, and attitude towards, the AAPI community” was particularly hurtful after a rise in anti-Asian hate speech during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Sadly, I don’t see your rhetoric, nor your policies changing,” Warren wrote. “I can no longer tolerate this mistreatment of the AAPI community by leaders of our office.”
The shooting Martin is charged with happened just days before Price was elected DA. Authorities allege that Martin shot a 45-year-old San Francisco man at around 8:20 p.m. Oct. 30, 2022, outside a bar in the 2100 block of MacArthur Boulevard. The suspected motive had to do with a dispute involving people Martin knew that started in the bar and spilled outside, authorities say.
The victim was released from a hospital a few months ago and is still recovering.
According to court documents, investigators were able to identify Martin as the suspect because of an eyewitness and also because he was wearing a distinctive t-shirt supporting Price’s bid to become DA. A picture of Martin wearing the same shirt was on Price’s campaign’s Facebook account, the documents say.
Just four days before the bar shooting, Price highlighted Martin’s work as a campaign volunteer. She said he volunteered because he had told her she was the only attorney he called who tried to help him recover his life after seven years of wrongful incarceration in a 2017 Oakland murder case that was overturned on appeal and that he was acquitted of in a retrial.
After learning of the shooting in early November, Price said she was “stunned” by the shooting allegations against Martin and offered best wishes to the victim.
“I am not aware of the details and I think none of us should rush to judgment,” Price said at the time.
Staff writers Jakob Rodgers and George Kelly contributed reporting.