afbray1-1
MARTINEZ — The prosecution of Ramello Randle has been anything but smooth sailing.
The 28-year-old Oakland man tried to serve as his own attorney last year, but the trial ended after he told the judge, “I’m not your b—-,” wished death upon the prosecutor and loudly declared that police and the district attorney were “f—ing framing me” for the murder of his child’s mother.
The courtroom outburst caused a mistrial but cost Randle his pro per status, allowing the courts to force him to accept representation by a private attorney.
Since then, somehow, things have only gotten worse.
At a Sept. 15 court appearance, Randle allegedly took a swing at his own lawyer, tripped in the process, and was quickly handcuffed and carted off to jail by courtroom deputies, according to multiple sources with firsthand knowledge. The attorney, a former DA candidate named Lawrence Strauss, was uninjured.
The attempted courtroom attack came, ironically, during a hearing where Randle was attempting to have Strauss removed so Randle could once again represent himself at trial. Instead, Judge John Kennedy ultimately replaced Strauss with another lawyer, Matthew Fregi, who’d briefly served as Randle’s lawyer previously.
Asked for his thoughts on the situation, Fregi declined to comment.
The courtroom chaos has left Randle’s case basically where it was last November, when the mistrial was declared and Randle’s self-representation was revoked. That happened while Deputy District Attorney Kevin Bell was cross-examining Randle’s mother, who had testified her son had an alibi for the time of the homicide.
After Randle objected to a line of questioning without success, he instructed his mom, “Don’t answer s— this (expletive) has to say then,” using a homophobic slur to refer to Bell, then profanely accused his co-defendant, Christopher Slaughter, of joining in on the plot to frame him for murder.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please disregard anything you’re hearing right now,” Judge Charles “Ben” Burch said in a last-ditch effort to preserve the trial.
“Weird a–. I hope you drive home and crash and die,” Randle said to Bell, the prosecutor. “They’re trying to frame me for something I didn’t even do.”
Jurors were excused a few minutes later. The next day, Burch revoked Randle’s pro per status, declared a mistrial, and later took himself off the case altogether.
Randle is accused of placing a tracking device on 24-year-old Jonaye Lahkel Bridges’ vehicle, following her to a 7-Eleven in Antioch and opening fire on her and a male companion as they sat in a car outside the store. Bridges was killed and the man suffered non-fatal gunshot injuries. Contra Costa prosecutors say Randle’s internet searches, his fingerprints on the gun used, texts about the tracking device and evidence he arranged an alibi for himself all demonstrate his guilt.
Randle’s defense is that Slaughter was the real killer, and that he is attempting to weasel his way out of a murder charge by pointing the finger at Randle. Slaughter has already taken a plea deal to a manslaughter charge but has not yet been sentenced, and probably won’t be until after Randle’s trial.
Originally published at Nate Gartrell