New district attorney under fire for controversial plea deal

Families of victims slain in Oakland are saying new Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price is not listening to them and needs to be recalled for being too soft on crime.

The statements came following what critics describe as a lenient plea deal announced last week regarding Delonzo Logwood, 32, who was previously charged with allegedly killing three people in 2008.

Under the plea deal, Logwood pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and personal use of a gun. The charges for allegedly killing the two others were dropped.

Logwood was just 18 then and is very sorry for his behavior, according to a statement Friday by Price. The judge was not convinced that Logwood was remorseful, in what Price described as “critical comments from the bench.”

Logwood has been incarcerated since 2009. He has been in Santa Rita Jail since 2015.

“Given the state of the evidence and the age of the cases, our office concluded it was in the interests of justice to resolve the prosecution of Mr. Logwood with a plea to multiple crimes in connection with the murder of Eric Ford,” Price said in a statement released Friday.

But Brenda Grisham said the families of the victims need to have a say in how long a criminal goes to prison. Grisham lost her son Christopher Jones to violence in Oakland in 2010.

Following her son’s death, Grisham started the Christopher Lavelle Jones Foundation and Their Lives Matter, both to honor the memory of Jones.

“The families are watching very closely,” Grisham said. “They should be a little important to somebody.”

Grisham said Price is out of touch with victims’ families. No one is going to speak for her son but her, she said.

Logwood will continue to be incarcerated for years under the plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors, Price said.

“The Logwood case is a difficult case by any measure,” she said.

Logwood was allegedly part of the Ghost Town gang, a subset of the P-Team gang, according to testimony in 2018 by Oakland police Acting Capt. Tony Jones.

Jones was testifying as a gang expert in a preliminary hearing for Logwood and a co-defendant accused of five fatal shootings in 45 days in Oakland in the summer of 2008.

That year, 125 people were slain in the city and a disproportionate number of them were Black, according to a report by the Urban Strategies Council, which aims to eliminate persistent poverty in the Bay Area.

“She needs to be recalled,” Grisham said of Price. Everyone in Grisham’s circle and others agree with that, Grisham alleges. “This is life and death,” she added.

Price has defended her stance on violence and its effects on communities.

“The level of violent assaults that injured and took the lives of so many young Black men in the summer of 2008 was not acceptable then, and it is not acceptable today,” she said. “Our mission in the here and now is to stop violence in our community.”

Price said these old cases have created pressure and trauma for survivors, defendants and their families, the court system and Price’s staff. She said everyone responsible for administering justice in Alameda County must do better.

Defense lawyer Linda Fullerton declined to speak about the case until after the sentencing, which is scheduled for March 23. Logwood remains in Santa Rita Jail. He’s being held without bail.

Price did not respond Tuesday evening to a request for comment.