By JAKOB RODGERS | jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com and NATE GARTRELL | ngartrell@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: March 23, 2023 at 10:56 a.m. | UPDATED: March 23, 2023 at 12:29 p.m.

OAKLAND — Less than two months after lamenting “he had never seen a case pled down like this before,” an Alameda County Superior Court judge rejected a plea deal that would have imposed 15 years for a reputed West Oakland gang member accused of gunning down three people when he was 18 years old.

Judge Mark McCannon ruled Thursday that 31-year-old Delonzo Logwood should go to trial, saying he had decided against accepting a plea deal proposed by prosecutors. Logwood had previously been eligible for a sentence of death or life without parole before being offered the unusual plea deal by District Attorney Pamela Price.

Before he rejected the deal, McCannon said he has had “many sleepless nights” about this case. He then picked apart comments by Logwood’s attorney, who had attempted to rebuff the evidence against his client.

“You can’t think an apology will make this all better,” McCannon said in court Thursday. “What are you sorry for if you didn’t do anything?”

“I keep asking myself — and you should be asking yourself — ‘What if he did it?’,” McCannon continued. He later said he often presses prosecutors for less prison time and added, “I don’t just hand out lengthy sentences. One minute, I wouldn’t want to be in jail. I’ve got family in jail. I’ve got friends in jail. So this isn’t lost on me.”

McCannon noted that the deputy district attorney who helped broker the deal, Staci Pettigrew, wasn’t in court. When he asked about her absence he wasn’t given an explanation, he said. Multiple sources within the DA’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, have said Pettigrew resigned earlier this month. Two other county prosecutors have also recently turned in their resignations, blaming a new policy introduced by Price designed to drastically reduce prison terms through eliminating the use of sentencing enhancements, with few exceptions.

Jimmie Wilson, a longtime Alameda County prosecutor who was appointed to serve as one of Price’s administrators after running against her for DA last year, showed up for Thursday’s hearing in Pettigrew’s place.

Price herself attended the hearing, sitting in the first row of the gallery. After the proceeding, she left the courtroom surrounded by a half-dozen employees, declining to comment on the ruling.

It is unusual for a judge to reject a plea deal that has been agreed upon by both defense attorneys and the DA. During Thursday’s hearing, Logwood apologized and the mother of one of his three alleged victims submitted a letter to the court that said three times of Logwood: “He will kill again.”

A trial date has not yet been set.

Appearing in court in a yellow jail jumpsuit with a white long sleeve undershirt and a blue face mask, Logwood said he wanted to apologize for “all the destruction I caused.” He spoke for about two minutes.

“I want to apologize for my conduct. I’m going to turn a negative into the positive,” Logwood said in court Thursday, while referencing his desire to help end violence and build up the community. “It’s going to take us to save us.”

He ended his apology by saying: “Please forgive me, I’m sorry.”

The mother of Zaire Washington — one of three people Logwood was charged with killing — submitted a letter to the court that was read aloud Thursday by a victim’s advocate, saying her son was “so senselessly and cruelly taken from me.”

“There is emptiness inside me that haunts me every day for the rest of my life … (Washington) will never be able to live out his full potential,” the letter reads. She asked McCannon for a strict prison sentence, adding that when she heard of the proposed deal, “It felt like I was shot in the heart again.”

“I know that this man will kill again,” she wrote, later adding, “I fear for my life and everybody else’s.”

After the ruling, Logwood — who appeared attentive throughout the hearing — looked back at the gallery where his mother and other loved ones were sitting. He then leaned over and consulted with his attorney. As court was let out, Logwood waved at his family before deputies led him back to the bus to Santa Rita Jail.

Logwood’s mother told this news organization last month that she was displeased by the deal and hoped her son would prove his innocence at trial.

Attorney David Briggs, representing Logwood, gave a point-by-point rebuttal of the evidence in the two homicide counts that Logwood hadn’t pleaded no contest to, saying he didn’t want to address the third homicide in detail in case McCannon rejected the deal. He said he was confident Logwood would be exonerated at trial.

“We don’t do justice to the family or defendants or the community if we convict an innocent man,” Briggs said, adding that much of the prosecution evidence in one of the killings was based on “a convicted liar.” He argued Logwood was the product of an extremely rough upbringing, that he’s worked to reduce violence in the community, he’s stayed discipline-free in the jail, that he got baptized, and that he plans to improve his life when he gets out of prison.

“He decided what he wanted to do was mentor young people so they didn’t make the same mistakes (he) did,” Briggs said. He later added, “He wants to live a responsible life himself.”

Attorney Linda Fullerton, also part of Logwood’s defense team, said she was “completely disappointed” with the ruling and said “this was a just plea.”

The case represents one of the highest-profile decisions yet by Price, who won election in November while proposing a sweeping new approach to justice and punishment, including reopening investigations of fatal police shootings while placing numerous longtime prosecutors on leave. Among her first moves was to review cases involving defendants who were younger than 25 at the time of their crime.

The move also comes just a month and a half after McCannon expressed deep concern over Price’s deal, particularly given the lack of remorse shown by Logwood over the 15 years since the killings. Chief among McCannon’s “public safety” concerns was an alleged statement Logwood made to another Santa Rita Jail inmate about how he plans on “just going bad on everybody” after his release.

At an early February hearing, McCannon said he needed to hear that Logwood had matured and “changed his ways” before approving the deal.

The deal represented an about-face from the office’s approach just last summer, when Pettigrew argued in court records that it was proper to charge the case in a way that made Logwood eligible for life without parole.

She noted in a pretrial motion that all of the charges — save one carjacking count — carried a potential life sentence, adding that jurors would be prejudiced if prosecutors tried Logwood for all three homicides at once. Logwood was charged with murder in the deaths of Eric Ford, 22, Zaire Washington, 24, and Richard Carter, 30, in separate Oakland shootings in 2008.

Logwood was charged alongside 30-year-old Dijon Holifield with five slayings between the two of them in a span of 45 days in the summer of 2008. Holifield, who was 17 at the time, was ultimately prosecuted in juvenile court, records show.

The original charges included enhancements alleging that the killings were committed to further the interests of the West Oakland-based gang known as Ghost Town and that both men belonged to a subset of Ghost Town known as the P-Team. Prosecutors also connected the pair to a number of other violent crimes, including the nonfatal shooting of a potential witness and a series of armed carjackings.

Washington was gunned down on June 30, 2008, near his mother’s home on the 8000 block of MacArthur Boulevard. One of two suspects yelled “get him” before the gunmen shot Washington in the back and buttocks. Three weeks after the day of his death, he’d been scheduled to testify against Logwood’s half-brother in an unrelated shooting case.