Twelve years after they had been convicted of murders that included the assassination of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, the previous chief and a staffer on the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery have filed longshot petitions for launch from jail.
Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey, each 37, filed motions this yr in search of to overturn their 2011 homicide convictions for the assassination of Bailey in the summertime of 2007. Each males are serving life sentences with out the opportunity of parole, in New Folsom and Salinas Valley prisons, respectively.
Bey IV was convicted of three murders — Bailey’s, Odell Robertson and Michael Wills — all killed in Oakland in the course of the summer time of 2007. Mackey was additionally convicted of fatally taking pictures Wills, an Oakland resident killed in what prosecutors known as a copycat of the race-based Zebra Homicide spree of the Nineteen Seventies.
The motions cite modifications in California’s felony homicide rule underneath a 2019 legislation that raises the bar for when prosecutors can cost individuals with homicide. The Alameda District Legal professional’s Workplace has already filed boilerplate authorized responses opposing each motions, arguing that the very nature of their convictions must be sufficient for a choose to dismiss the petitions outright.
“At Petitioner’s trial, the jury convicted him of three first diploma murders with a number of homicide particular circumstance findings as to every one,” Deputy District Legal professional Dana Drusinsky wrote in an opposition to Bey IV’s petition. “As to every homicide, the jury discovered true that Petitioner was both ‘the precise killer’ or ‘that he did intend to kill.’”
The opposition to Mackey’s movement, filed by a special prosecutor, is an identical besides that “three” first-degree murders is modified to “two.”
Bailey’s sister, Lorelei Waqia, mentioned she was happy to listen to the DA’s workplace is opposing Bey IV’s and Mackey’s launch.
“Each evil males must serve their full time period for the homicide,” Waqia mentioned in an interview. “They knew what they had been doing — to take a life.”
District Legal professional Pamela Value, a former civil rights lawyer who took workplace this yr, ran in 2022 on a marketing campaign opposing life with out parole sentences. Her workplace has decreased fees in a number of pending instances to make the defendants ineligible for such penalties, however to this point has not made any try to scale back Mackey or Bey IV’s sentences to provide them an opportunity for parole.
Mackey’s movement is ready for a standing convention in November. Bey IV’s doesn’t but have a a courtroom date however a choose signed an order appointing him a lawyer again in June, courtroom data present.
Bey IV is the son of Yusuf Bey, a former follower of the Nation of Islam who broke away to type Your Black Muslim Bakery within the Nineteen Seventies. The elder Bey, who ran for Oakland mayor in 1994, died in 2003 whereas going through fees that he raped and fathered youngsters with ladies as younger as 13. Bey IV took management of the bakery after his brother, Antar Bey, was shot and killed in Oakland in 2005.
Headquartered in Oakland, Your Black Muslim Bakery as soon as had a number of bakery places across the East Bay, together with the Oakland Coliseum, and wielded sufficient political affect that it landed a $1 million metropolis mortgage it by no means repaid and acquired assist from a congresswoman throughout its 2007 chapter. Bakery leaders preached Black empowerment and self-sustainability. However there have been all the time allegations of its darkish aspect, together with fraud, homicide and sexual abuse.
Bailey, a former Oakland Tribune reporter, was the editor of the Oakland Publish in 2007. A bakery handyman named Devaughndre Broussard would later testify that Bey IV held a grudge in opposition to Bailey for protecting his father’s youngster molestation case, and for a narrative he was engaged on in regards to the bakery’s troubled funds.
Broussard testified on the 2011 trial that he and Mackey adopted Bailey to work on Aug. 2, 2007 with the intention of killing him. Utilizing a Mossberg shotgun that had been stolen throughout a ransacking of a liquor retailer — a part of the bakery’s protest in opposition to alcohol gross sales in Black communities — Broussard shot Bailey a number of occasions on a downtown avenue, he admitted on the witness stand.
Broussard additionally admitted to killing Robertson, a relative of the person who killed Antar Bey, and implicated Mackey in Wills’ homicide. He mentioned Bey IV was discussing the Zebra Murders — a spree of Nineteen Seventies killings the place Black Muslims focused white individuals at random — then instructed Mackey to kill Wills, a white man who was strolling to a retailer to purchase cigarettes.
Due to his cooperation, Broussard averted a life sentence. He stays imprisoned at a hearth camp and was denied parole final month.
Mackey testified throughout trial that he by no means accompanied Broussard to kill Bailey and was opening the bakery that morning. Bey IV has maintained his innocence — regardless of a video at a police station the place he talks about his position in Bailey’s homicide — and has tried to revive Your Black Muslim Bakery from jail. In 2016, he was accused of utilizing a smuggled cellphone to order hits from jail, however by no means charged.
